MeMe (& Char & Chip?) at the Zoo: A Photo Essay

I took a ton of photos at the zoo, the other day. A ton. So I could hardly believe it when I came home and discovered zero photos of Baby Chip and only two that I like of Charleigh. Here they are; are you ready?

How is that possible? Well, Chip was tucked inside his infant seat and the double stroller. As for Charleigh? Charleigh loves the zoo. Especially its fences, walls, and enclosures.

Charleigh wouldn't touch a bird or an animal with a ten-foot pole. While I was taking beautiful photos of her sister, Charleigh was climbing my leg.

My grandma used to say: "I had seven children, and every one of them was different." I understand, now; I really do. My daughters, especially, are different from one other in so many ways.

I enjoy Clementine's sheer and utter delight in animals. I don't feel disappointed, though, that Charleigh likes them best from a distance (behind a wall, and preferably a solid wall, thank you very much). Each has her moments to shine, and--when it's Charleigh's turn--I'll be waiting with my heart on my sleeve. And my camera.

I wonder: do you think it's the same way with the Lord? Do you think He enjoys our shining moments but loves us just as well when we're at a great distance or off to the side or away from the spotlight? Because I think He does. I think He loves us just how He made us, every second, right where we are.

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I wish I were surprised and could say so, but the fact is: call attention to the return of your joy, and you'll almost certainly discover a cat and its poop in your minivan, also a dead bird in your driveway. I'm not even much phased, anymore; I just clean things up best I can and roll with Plan B.

(Plan A had involved my migraine-stricken friend Anjie.)

I was on my way to the zoo with the little kids, Plan B. I called my brother on my way, as I am wont to do, because I like to razz him about monkeys. He was in bed and couldn't get up. Some form of paralysis, he said, and he could shuffle a little after getting assistance to his feet, but he couldn't lift anything.

After my sister-in-law returned with meds, I hung up with my brother and called Pastor David, who prayed with the little kids and me via speaker phone. The kids and I drove on to the zoo and had a nice enough time. I called my friend Christy on the way home (where I found a dead squirrel in the driveway), and she prayed with me, too.

Cade got off the bus, and I scrambled to oversee his homework process and drive him to his dad's, manage my (napless) daughters, and clean up the main part of the house while carrying Baby Chip. It was crazy town, and when Rob arrived for small (large) group, I was cleaning the bathroom.

But, later, I laughed myself to tears because--when a man other than your husband leans in the doorway talking to you as you give your toilet a frantic scrub-down?--you know you've become family. And I could've handed that toilet brush right over; he wouldn't have blinked. So funny.

Soon enough, the log cabin was stuffed to the gills with six families, and how we've managed to get ourselves a thirteen-year-old babysitter who can manage as many smaller kids as we can shut in a playroom (fourteen, last night), I'll never know, but there we were: eleven adults learning and praying in peace on freshly-vacuumed carpet.

Rachel and Zach lingered and were eating with us when the phone rang: my mom. My brother had lost all use of his arms and legs and was in an ambulance, headed to Knoxville. I hung up with Mom and blinked my dry eyes at Rachel and Jim. I felt insulated, isolated, underwater. A little numb in the face, but floaty. At peace.

And the lame--with his restored level of potassium--walks again, today, and will soon leave for Baltimore and Johns Hopkins and a neurosurgeon. Please cover him in prayer, along with my sister-in-law and nephews.

You know, he told me, recently: he no longer fears anything but the Lord, and I made light, a little, saying something about my great fear of mice. But I understand, suddenly. A person can reach the point of utter surrender: do what You will, Lord, as if it were ever up to me, anyway. I'm all in. I acknowledge without reservation that everything I have and everyone I love has always been under Your supreme authority. I'm tired of pretending otherwise and, in fact, I'm awfully glad You're in control, because I'm so tired. So very tired, Lord.

And there is no fear on that foundation of faith, only peace. Only peace.

For My Brother

Soul Mate

"Mama, what does this say?" Clementine asks, holding up a pink conversation heart.

I squint at the small print and read: "Soul mate."

She furrows her brow, tilts her head. "What's that?" she asks. "What's a soul mate?"

"It's someone who understands you better than anyone else," I tell her. Then, expecting her to say Daddy, I ask: "Who's your soul mate? Who understands you better than anyone else?"

She doesn't hesitate. "Jesus," she says.

Yes. Jesus.

The Return of Joy

My hair is falling out. It clogs the drains, fills the vacuum, sticks to the fleece sheet. I pull strand after strand from my cleavage and my food and Baby Chip's slobbery cheeks. So much hair. I'd be alarmed, but it's happened after every baby.

The pregnancy hormones are leaving my body, and glory hallelujah, I'm overcome with joy. Singing in the choir, Sunday, the hairs of my arms lifted. The Spirit, and how long had it been since I'd felt It that way?

I no longer startle at the sound of my own laughter. I can pray easily for others, and I want to, and I do. I asked Jim, last night, how long it's been since he's seen me crying: a few weeks, he said.

People say and write things that annoy me, and I don't even consider taking them on. I whisper-bless their pea-pickin' hearts, and I shut my ears and eyes to their words. I smile. I remind myself: the Lord hath not called me into service as the facebook police.

I saw, recently: "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate." I'm trying. (I considered writing those words up my arm in Sharpie.)

I haven't felt this happy since, oh, about September 2011.

And I'm praying the same, old prayer regarding the same, old unresolved issue, but one week from today, we'll put our trust in the hands of the top neurosurgeon this country has to offer, and we'll keep our faith in God, same as always. And by the stripes of His Son Jesus may we be healed, amen.

In the meantime, I'm trying to smooch Baby Chip's cheeks clean off. I'm leaning in close and smiling  because, generally, he smiles right back. I'm admiring the delicate bones of Charleigh's face even as she narrows her eyes and works her jaw back and forth at me, as a threat. I'm enjoying the way she uses "mines," not in reference to diamonds or coal, but to say things like: "Mama change mines shirt."

I'm praising Clementine's artwork and the way she draws sunglasses for herself and curly hair and sparkly shoes for her sister. I'm up-close-and-personal watching Cade learn experimental design and parenthetical citations, and I'm loving my man's (suddenly much smaller) body.

And I can't tell you why joy suddenly sat up straight as a poker in my soul, stretched and blinked against the light that's always been in my life. "Joy cometh in the morning," the psalmist writes, but the night can last a long, long time.

What I can tell you for sure (and I've written about this before) is that, if I could have felt joyful, I would have. Also that no one could pressure or even sweet-talk me back into joy. It was in there sure as the Holy Spirit's in there, but it was sleeping. I'm guessing the Holy Spirit in me was too busy fighting off that lion to shake the joy awake and offer it to you, as fruit on a platter. I'm sorry.

I want to tell you my joy has returned because my hormones are righting themselves. Or because I've moved fourteen months past miscarriage and seven past Jim's gastric bypass. I want to tell you I'm full to the brim with joy because I got my heart's desire in Baby Chip, because someone is going to try and help my brother. But it's more complicated than any one of those things, or all of them mixed and rolled together; it really is. 

If you know the Lord but feel the absence of joy, right now, I don't have an easy answer for you. I have only a promise that joy will return. In its own time, it will. I promise.

And look: I have a smile for you, today. A smile...and a prayer, too.

Little (Log) House in the Big Woods: A Photo Essay

We were expecting less, and later, so the girls' early-morning, in-stereo shouts of "SNOW!" caught us by surprise. We lost power shortly thereafter, but our log cabin remained comfortably warm until late afternoon, when Jim fired up the propane stove. Before its golden glow, we crowded on the couch to watch a movie on the laptop. I closed my heavy eyes and was mid-prayer for the restoration of power when the room was flooded with light. It was almost 6 pm. What a wonderful day we had, although we missed Cade, who got snowed in at his other house.

Becky and the Gift of Authenticity

 

**photo by Linda Gardner, October 2011

I would call my relationship with Becky serendipitous if I didn't know it to be a God thing. I didn't follow her blog when--in mid-June 2011--I learned she was moving within thirty minutes of me. Crazy as it sounds, I happened to click a link to a post in which she talked about moving to Virginia. A pretty big state, but my heart told me she was moving to me.

To confirm, I read through her posts labeled "Virginia." Then (afraid of sounding far-fetched and stalkerish) I sent her an e-mail. After she'd moved and gotten settled, we met for lunch, and we've been getting together here and there ever since.

I've written about Becky several times (This post makes me cry, looking back.), but I've hardly mentioned her name. Something just didn't feel right about it. I didn't feel like I had a solid understanding of blogger etiquette. Maybe I had lingering concerns about seeming stalkerish. 

Above all, I wanted Becky to know I was for real: that I didn't have any hidden agenda in reaching out to her, that I didn't need our friendship to be blogged. 

Because Becky is so real. I've known her in real life almost as long as I've known her through blogging, and what you read is what you get. I love that about her. And we're so different, but we've got the Jesus thing and a strong, maternal heritage of faith in common. Too, Becky's as wild about her family as I am about mine.

And this relationship has been good for me because I wonder, sometimes, if I'm spending too much time interacting online as opposed to face-to-face. Am I engaging in authentic relationships, or am I fooling myself, even cheating myself? 

Becky helps me believe that, sometimes, the people who know us very best are those who take the time to read our words. It is real. Or, at least, it can be. Sometimes, what you read is what you get. Becky helps me believe that bloggers are real people: broken people, lonely people, beautiful people. People who--like me, and for whatever reason--just need to write it out.

 

**Jim took the above photo; Becky edited it. Read her post about Baby Chip here.

**Blessed to attend (and photograph - squee!) Becky's daughters' baptisms on February 24th. She didn't ask me to take photos (although she gave permission, of course), and I told her as I left that I'd taken a bunch of terrible ones. But I guess I was just seeing through tears? It also seems possible that the Holy Spirit took over, because I have next to no idea what I'm doing with my new camera. Becky's post about her girls' baptisms is beautiful; you can read it here.

The Dress

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If it happened during first grade, and I'm pretty sure it did, my mother was yet in her 20's, and it's strange to think of the rapid, woodpecker ratatattat of her Singer, her foot on the brown floor pedal, that other foot--the silver one--gleaming proud of its colored thread under the yellow spotlight in the belly of the machine.

Because I'm 38 and ain't never sewn a thing.

She loved to sew but did it in stolen moments, mostly, and I do recall bugging the snot out of her to please abandon her project and get me a drink, a snack; play me a game; pay attention (in general) to me, I'm dying of boredom.

But she had this way, and still very much does, of managing a person and her woes. Back then, she sent me on missions impossible (I'll bet you can't find such-n-such and bring it to me before I count to three thousand!) to get me out of her hair, and I reckon it was a sad day when, all atiptoe, I startled her into resuming the counting she'd done only when I'd been within earshot.

She'd been busted (her great game ended), but even after, she never yelled. She chased me around the house with a cake turner every now and again, but she always ended up laughing too hard to actually spank me.

She's sewn me a hundred dresses, but the Strawberry Shortcake one, in particular, comes to mind. I loved the character second only to Blueberry Muffin and picked out the fabric myself. I could hardly wait to wear the dress, and I really tried, for once, to leave my poor mother in peace, hunched with her creation over her machine.

The day at last came, and I stepped proud as punch onto that yellow school bus wearing my Strawberry Shortcake dress, white tights, scuffed Buster Brown shoes, and pink ribbons in my ponies.

And other kids made fun of my "babyish" dress all day long so that--by the time my mother swung wide the door, that afternoon--my eyes were red-rimmed, my nose dripping. I can recall as though it were yesterday her crouching and folding me in, asking: "What's wrong?"

I remember sobbing into her shoulder and blubbering about the other kids, and then? her saying: "My goodness. What were they thinking? Well, let's just take this dress off and hang it in the closet. You don't have to wear it. ever. again. Come on; let's change clothes and get a snack."

And there are so many things to do today, on this day, in this time and place. I haven't showered; the house is as if a bomb went off (yet again); the small group will be here at 6:30 (I really should bake cookies!); and I'm likely to be up until midnight helping Cade finish his science-fair display. But nothing feels more important to me, in this rare moment of quiet, than to say:

This is not a Dolly-Parton-coat-of-many-colors story. I never wore that dress, again. But I've saved it all these years in hopes that, someday, I'd have a daughter stronger than I was, then. Or that, someday, I'd be a fraction of the mother mine was while yet in her 20's.

**writing in community with Tanya and friends