I'm good at ignoring reality, bad at serving others' needs, even my own. It's my naturally introverted personality. I really need to engage quietly with my world--bathe in sunlight, pause at a meandering brook, revel in children's laughter, bathtime's bubbles and bedtime's wandering stories.
But sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed, I go too deep inside, so deep it's unhealthy. I forget to eat. Hours pass while thinking and writing, and we haven't done homeschooling and I marathon-race to catch up to time, my old nemesis.
I go so deep, I don't do what's best for me and my family. I don't run because I just can't bring myself to walk. out. that. door.
I don't go to church because the lights are too bright and people's handshakes make my fragile soul quake. The sheer thought of the sea of faces makes my stomach lurch. Slamming doors, blaring toy horns, and the sibling screams and fighting make insides churn.
And I grow weary of growing things--flowers always so dry in this heat, children that won't relent, thirsty for me--and I'm thirsty myself. They always need me, pull at every corner of me. I've given way more of myself away than I would've ever dreamt possible when this all began. And yet, I know that God, the Master Gardener--he never grows weary and so I pray for some of his strength, seek His face like a blind woman, feeling the grooves and crevices with her hands, desperate for some spark of recognition, some slight remembering.
It comes out in a whispered hush when I first get out of bed in the morning and Satan whispers his first words of defeat to me for the day. I hear him--"You're such a failure, an idiot--you should just crawl back in bed." I hate that I do this ugly self-talk, and my soul cries and it just comes out gently hushed--in barely audible groans--"God, help. Help me through this day."
I want to find a well that runs deep, an oasis in this desert. God, He's still gardening, though my eyes see darkly and I can't make out the fruits--He's preparing something like paradise. Oh, I've searched so hard and so long, so desperately I've drank blood from the camel's side, letting it substitute when God offers real drink in this parched land.
And my eyes widen in horror at what I've allowed my children to drink in lieu of God's pure goodness and sweet righteousness.
How?! How, I ask God, can I give them drink, these children looking at me, thirsting, when I am parched myself?
How do I die to self some more, because really--I get it--I think that's what you're asking of me--asking me to forge on, to travel through this pilgrim land searching for the Promised Land, only a cloud to follow, the holy heaviness of you pointing the way.
My eyes are hazed over with the fog of you, You all mystery, and my limbs are weary with the weight of promise and the burden of this place called Now. I groan and ache with the reality of it.
And I sojourn with others weary--I see it in their eyes, hear it in their words, read the pain in their face as they stand there and tell me that they had lost all hope. Yet, I know You've promised so much more--and all you ask of me is to trust that I will some day hold the promise in my palm.
For now, it is elusive this side of Heaven and Your perfect Presence, and the only real joy here, now, is getting to know You, tasting of you, yearning for you more and more until my heart's cry is only "More of you! More of you! Christ, come! Come, and save! Part those skies and ride in like thunder, swift, mighty, fire in your eyes, take me, Beloved!"
But here I stay and while I wait, orphaned, here--in this Now--I wander under-prepared and oh so inadequate and I just beat on Your chest, God, like a confused, angry child and beg, "Why?" My heart hardens and I struggle in my own sin-stench. I have been the desert-wanderer, the chosen child, grafted into your family vine--I've been that one, given so much grace and refusing to see--refusing to open my mouth and eat the manna.
My stomach lurches and groans with pains and yet I refuse to see the manna you've provided as good.
I don't do what's good for me. I go deep inside and hide in caverns of sin and recesses of bitterness and grievance. What I would see if I came out of my cave, is you standing there, gently holding out your hand, offering life--real life.
And the whole time I'm refusing what's good for me, You're saying "Something better is coming, child, if you will just eat--just open your mouth."
I swallow down the goodness of you, and I'm a stubborn child, surprised at the sweetness and delight of it. I want to be there with my children--swallow down all that goodness--open mouth wide.
With so many things calling all around for my attention, so reckless, holding me, dangling there in their throat-choking grasp, God just keeps planting me firmly on the ground, keeps showing me that the most authentic, most deserving and most precious community is right here at home.
They are my sojourners.
I flail around in bitterness and the cold left by absence of fellowship. I grieve and what for when God has put me here with them to nurture and to talk with, to read for hours in the hammock with and play music with and read the bible with, to worship with as we bake cookies and scrub dirty counters, to explore nature with, to run through the hills and go on a life-adventure with.
The whole wide world--and the wide web--can make it seem as though what mothers do in their homes isn't important--that the little, quiet, sacred community we're building isn't holy work. It all seems to scream that we need to be doing some ministry to the poor, or we need to be involved in a local church, or serving in community in some way.
The deceptiveness of culture has slowly trickled down into the church and told women that just being a mother and wife isn't enough. But that's a lie from the roaring hell-lion.
Oh, how the roaming lion wants to decieve us to think that the work we're doing--the work of a mother--isn't holy and sacred--he does not want us to think that just loving them is enough.
I know that if I'm serving in the context that God has placed me in, I will touch the lives I'm meant to touch, regardless of my church affiliation, my community and ministry involvement, or my blog numbers.
I am only human--and God knows--He designed me this way. A standard that tells me I have to constantly be reaching higher depletes me of the air and life that I could give where He has called me to give--and mostly, that is at home.
I really think this could be my oasis--the deep well of laughter and bedtime giggles and stories and living like Jesus is in the room.
This could be my strength to never stop--the eternal value of four lives that have been discipled for Christ--literally led to Christ's feet at the cross and transformed, radically changed and devoted to His cause.
We can do that--you can do that--I can do that--that's the burden God placed in us mothers. When else will we get the chance to disciple so intensely? To put our mark on someone, to leave a legacy?
We have such an amazingly golden opportunity here with our children.
When else will this godly call, this priceless hour pass by again?
We must seize it with all the gusto we can muster and that takes putting off of some earthly things, some voices that call wild in the wind and vie for our attention and ask to carry us and toss us around with every new doctrine and opinion.
So I won't crawl back into bed. Not today. I will stand with my children, Husband by my side, us all just orphans at the gate. And I will remember that. I will remember that as I mother them--they are orphans--they are His--and they are waiting for His return just as ardently, expectantly, desperately as I am.
While they wait, while I wait, I will mother these gifts well, with my dying breath, I will be a real mother to them--a mother worn for the journey--and they won't have to journey or wander alone.
I will journey with them, and at the end, place them back into His hands.
Gratitude: {#956-976}........
#956...a lunch in the park...women talking, children playing...
#957...the warmth of sunlight...
#958...hard eucharisteo...learning to hang in there when these social events aren't easy for me...
#959...my sweet Bella flourishing in the classroom with her Mama after not doing so well in the other classroom...
#960...a director who gives me the week off when energy is flagging and anxiety takes over...the practical care of a sister in Christ...
#961...having the week to clear my mind, rest, renewal...
#962...patching up disagreements, how best friends can scrub you like sand-paper and make you Christ-smooth
#963...chasing butterflies, dragonflies in the backyard with my girls...
#964...watching my strong girls swim their hearts out for the team...
#965...hard eucharisteo...pounding headache and nausea, the noise of the crowd too much--giving it to God and learning to be a {somewhat} patient mama through it all, loving on my children...
#966...going out to celebrate with the girls for their first meet out of town--Husband meeting us when he got off work..
#967...watching birds, squirrels in the backyard...
#968...not going anywhere, napping in the hammock on a Sunday afternoon; Sabbath rest...
#969...my Bella asking if she is still the new girl next week, reassuring her that no, she is not the "new girl" after the first week.
#970...taking care of my sweet Bella-girl, how she lets me bathe her face with a cool cloth to bring down fever, how she sits up and tries to spoon in the ice cream, submissively puts the thermometer under her tongue, lets me hold her...
#971...Lorna making oranges for Bella, bringing them to her bed...
#972...Ivy's concerned "Bella, are you hot?"
#973...Spider lillies splashing the whole backyard in red...
A gift cool, warm, sun-soaked...
#974...the end of my daughter's nose...
#975...hot shower
#976...feeling the warmth of sun on my bare skin and then the first of tiniest drops of rain....
Still counting and linking up with sweet Ann and others...
