Moments in Grace

My momma always told me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Yeah, well, I guess lately I’ve taken that to heart. I haven’t been able to write, to talk, to process much because the ugly truth is, I think I’ve been afraid if I opened my mouth, not too much nice was going to come out.   The ugly truth is, sometimes you can struggle through and put on a brave smile and hold back the spewing lava behind your eyes but it still burns you up from the inside.   It still burns.   Bitterness never leads to betterness. And here I am, this very, very pregnant mama, pregnant with this seventh baby, skin splitting ready,   any day now, ready, and feeling very unready to actually deliver this most precious cargo into the light of this broken world.   Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last nine months contemplating whether his delivery day will be my dying day.   And sure, I shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts, I shouldn’t be focusin...

So maybe your days have been hard lately. Maybe just breathing seems hard.  Like your lungs can't seem to fill fully. Maybe you wake up every day and just...try...to...survive. Yeah, I know you. I've been there. Lately.  I've been there. Stressed out, crushed by life, drowning. Because last school year I thought I just might have a nervous breakdown.  And my only hope was that something, somewhere would change.  And one day into this school year I was a crying mess.  After one day.  Because everything bad about last year had followed me here.  Maybe you've been there? And the thing that you hoped in seems crushed?  The hope of easier is abandoned? Maybe you're not a homeschooling mother of six like me.  Maybe you don't have kids with learning struggles, processing problems and attention deficit. A toddler that screams nonstop and two other small boys that think wrestling is actually a school subjec...

I am the mother that almost wasn’t. I know, you find that hard to believe looking at my twelve passenger van and the herd of kids I wrangle but, yes, I am that. The mother that almost wasn’t,   except for …   grace. Yes, there almost wasn't piles of smelly dishes, and mountains of laundry,  shoes up the wazoo, and Legos gone wild, but there also almost wasn't tiny blonde tots with eyes like the ocean, and chubby hands that grab your face to pull you in close for a bubbling kiss.  Because if I wasn't a mother, I wouldn't have messes, my bamboo would gleam, but my arms would be ache-empty and I used to think I wanted it that way. Before I knew grace and God.   I was the kid who, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, would have said, photo journalist, poet maybe.   Kids?   They weren’t on the radar.   It’s hard to imagine how kids fit when you’re planning on traveling the world, telling stories with pictu...

Standing there, under the moonlight, I call to the girls, clad in dance uniforms, to come to the van so we can leave dance. My friend turns to me and says, "How are you?" "I'm...o.k." Liar. "Tired.  Me, I'm tired." He looked tired.  As tired as I felt. "Just twenty or so more years of tired. That's what we have isn't it?  It'll be that long before we get some peace, get some quiet, right?" Him, parked, with his big twelve passenger van next to my twelve passenger van packed full of eight kids, my six plus two carpoolers, in the frantic rush of dance practice and dinner and doing. "Don't tell me that.  There's got to be hope.  Hope?  That's all I've got right now." And all this week, all I've heard running in my head are just these words: Overwhelmed.  Crushed by life.  Unable. And I can't seem to get it together. I've felt it long and deep, this crushing, this breaking...

The moon reflecting on snow, moonlight dances white over wonder of winter. I sit inside with candles flickering against the night air, heavy with the expectation of snow. Holding this pajama clad blond boy, coughing croupy, sick eyed and still. The others are visiting grandma and grandpa and the house is quiet and dim. The doctor said she couldn't believe it was croup.  When I called and said it was croup, they didn't believe it because they usually see it only in the fall or spring but yes, it sure is croup, she said.  "But this croup isn't that bad, it sounds worse than it is," she encouraged. I'd said that I knew, because I'd seen bad croup.  So bad that it sent my firstborn to the hospital.  At that doctor appointment the pediatrician took one look at us and told me to hold tight because he was calling for an ambulance.  Me, pregnant with daughter and holding my lethargic feverish son, climbed into the ambulance and rode ...

The sounds of laughing boys and running feet on crunching leaves meet my ears as we stand under gray November sky. The park is empty this day except for my boys and two little girls about 8 or 9 swinging. The girls eyes keep finding their way over to us and they are watching the running of these four, all fire and pulsing. The toddling one year old plunges over to them in curious wonder, running and then stopping short a few feet away, innocence pondering at these friends. And the girl full of her own curiosity, she calls, "Can I see your baby?" "Sure," I say. Her brown fingers gently stroke his corn silk tufts.  He looks up at her, his pieces of sky reflecting her chocolate-almond eyes. "I like his hair, it's so nice," she says with so much sugar. "Thank you, but I like yours." And I do.  Under this November sky I watch how it blows wild, like ten thousand sprigs of softest warm wool, dancing. Held back only by a head band, t...

The last rays of a perfect golden fall day were fading into a clear sky. Standing outside the front door, I've been busy cleaning the garage, sweeping. In the hustle of the moment I hear a voice behind me saying, "Look, Mama!  Look what I got you!" A sweet boy voice of the three year old speaks into the crisp air.  I love this voice.  This voice I wish I could wrap in a box and tie with a ribbon to place on my shelf.  Then I could go and open it over and over again.  I turn and look at this shy smile grinning up in pleased excitement.  In small cupped hands, I see the gift. Fragile, white fluff connected to a withered stem. Dandelion seeds. "See them?  See them?  I got it for you! Here take it!" And I do.  And I hold the crumbling pieces of fluff and marvel at the beauty of this moment. Because it's not that I love dandelion seeds.  I don't.  And really I don't need them. Or like them. But I love this boy....

"My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly God's grace for you.  Stand firm in this grace." 1 Peter 5:12 NLT We've had our share of funerals over the last year and a half.  We lost three grandparents, an uncle, an aunt, a friend and then there was me. We almost lost me.  Or maybe I was almost found in heaven. When you come closer to death than you've ever come, it changes you.  It makes you realize a few things.  My hope is not in this world and it hasn't been since I was 18 years old, the day I died to me and came alive to Christ.  Sometimes it's only when you taste death, that you know life, the assurance of it. This weekend we celebrated life. The life of our sixth child, his first birthday.  We threw a big party and rejoiced that God has once again blessed our lives with a precious life to steward and love.  It is in bringing forth this life that I almost lost mine one...