for the sweet love of god

my literary boys

2011-06-08T10:39:00.001-07:00

yesterday was the awards assembly at wyatt and seth's school, and during this assembly, The Unfinished Jigsaw for 2010/2011 (an anthology of literary and art work by students from c'ville city schools) was released. the children who have literary or art work chosen to be in the publication are mentioned and presented w/ a copy of the book. well, both collier boys had their work chosen! seth wrote a story, and wyatt a poem. i’m including them below:

___________________________________

The Fire-Breathing Dragon
by seth collier, grade 1

There was a boy who saw a big, green dragon. The dragon woke up and saw the boy. He got out of the dark cave and chased the boy named Seth. Seth saw a sword and a shield. He picked it up and the dragon breathed fire at Seth. Whoosh! The dragon broke the shield. Seth put the sword up and stabbed the dragon. Uhhhhh! The dragon fell down and died.

Trapped, a haiku
by wyatt collier, grade 3

In the cell with bars
You start to cry for some help
No one comes for you.

___________________________________

now, if you’re like me, you are delighted by seth's story--so like him to be the hero of a dragon story, ha ha--but you might start freaking out about wyatt’s poem: “wow. such a stark, powerful image. . .but oh no! why does wyatt feel trapped? why does he feel like no one is going to come for him?” because of course this poem surfaced from the depths of his subconsciousness. you might assume that here, in written form, is finally the proof that you are a terrible parent. (unless you are not his parent, in which case you think “oh dear, something has gone terribly wrong with the way miska is parenting her child. here is the proof in written form, published no less.”)

this must be investigated--or "gently explored"--with this 9 year old child. last night as wyatt was playing his new keyboard in his room (he has memorized swan lake, the one-handed version, and we hear it repeatedly), i walked in as nonchalantly as possible and asked him if he would tell me about his poem. he said sure. i asked how it came about and what prompted him to write about being trapped. he told me his class went outside and sat under the covered sidewalk while it rained and wrote their poems and that his friend gave him the idea. “oh, really?” i was still so casual with only a tiny bit of hysteria creeping into my voice. “but do you feel that way, wyatt? like you’re trapped and no one is coming to help you?” (so subtle.)

“huh?” was his initial response. then he looked up at the ceiling to think about it, and said, “hmmm, i don’t think so. . .nah, i don’t feel that way.”

we can only hope, people. we can only hope. that boy is deep and God only knows what goes on inside him.

he was finished with the conversation after that, ready to move on to something else, and i was summarily dismissed from his room.

sawyer all american family tour

2011-04-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

last week was the boys' spring break, and we ventured up to d.c. for several days to see the sights. now, i am not good at sight-seeing, and the city completely whipped me (it is possible that having 2 boys with the energy level of young chimpanzees may also have contributed).

but the great thing about our trip was seeing some good friends, the sawyers and 1/2 of the scotts (sadly, justin was at a funeral), and my favorite experience was walking around the monuments at night with everyone. and my very, very favorite thing was listening, while we walked, to michael and wyatt talk. wyatt's constant "what ifs" and "would you rather have this experience or that experience" and his desire for me to engage in mathematical equations and whatnot leave me feeling dizzy and exhausted on my good days. michael, on the other hand, played with wyatt conversationally in a way that was just beautiful. michael is one of those unassuming geniuses, and wyatt finally met his match. he actually had to walk away at one point in the conversation because he was so frustrated that michael had bested him. (if you don't know wyatt, you might not understand why this is such a good thing, but trust me, it is.) here we are (i'm behind the camera): wyatt, winn, michael, baby max, amy, erin, and seth (who, incidentally, commented a number of times about how much fun it was to hang out with erin. he's had a little bit of a crush on her for years.)

if you are able to make it up to d.c., i highly recommend the sawyer all american family tour. they know all the sights to see and how to get around, but most importantly, they know where the best food is.

continuing with the category of "things that make me happy"

2011-04-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

i just spent the last week cruising around the bahamas with my sister. this is sooo my natural habitat. will you look at that water?!

and the time with my beautiful sister was priceless.

yay amy

2011-03-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

my bff, the fabulous amy walker, flew in from denver for the weekend. we were strolling along downtown when we spotted this license plate and snapped a photo with our stealth powers before the car drove away.

if you strip it down to its most elemental form, "yay amy!" is what my heart says when i think of my friend's presence in this world and in my life. she makes me want to jump up and down and clap my hands and even do a cheerleader high kick. yay for a beautiful, alive, hilarious, open-hearted woman. yay for the kind of friend who makes me feel at home. yay for a friend with whom I can laugh, cry, and eat a shocking amount of chocolate, all in the space of 15 minutes or less.

yay amy indeed.

a thing of beauty is a joy forever

2011-02-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

tonight we instituted something new in the collier household: Family Reading Party. necessary items for the FRP: a comfy spot, a fuzzy blanket, a good book and light to read by.

somebody pinch me. i think i might be dreaming.

this song makes me happy

2011-02-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

it's 5:oo on saturday afternoon, and wyatt and seth make the incongruous request for homemade cinnamon rolls. "well, why not?" i think. we're not going anywhere (i've still got my jammie pants on), so might as well break out the flour, buttah and sugah.

and turn on the music. powerful stuff is on my kitchen playlist. i like to listen to it when i'm cooking up a little something.

sadly, i am no musician and cannot discuss music with any intelligence, but the whole sound and tone and rhythm and soulfulness of this song just strikes me as delicious.

i heart bikram yoga

2011-02-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

let the beauty we love be what we do.
there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. ~rumi

"let go of your expectations. they will not serve you here." my bikram yoga instructor tells us as we stand in the middle of our mats, toes and heels together, arms at our sides, ready to begin our class.

i try to let go of what i think the next 90 minutes are going to hold, let go of what i think i should be able to do, what i think i should feel or how i should look.

the room is heated to 105 degrees. we begin with pranayama breathing, sweat our way through 26 asanas (postures) and close with kapalabhati breathing. the routine never changes, but as the instructors keep telling us, our minds and our bodies are different every day, so each class is a unique experience. and because each class is different, it's crucial to listen and pay attention to our bodies in the moment and how far we can go into the posture. it's a discipline in paying attention and being present, not only for our body's sake, but also for our mind and heart.

i've been practicing bikram yoga for 5 months now, and i'm hooked, although it's one of those love/hate relationships. some days i think i'm going to die in that hot room, that the next class after mine will come in and find my boiled corpse in, well, corpse pose (savasana). there are days when i pray to God that i can make it back to my car all the way up the street and up the steps of the parking garage. but i keep coming back to it, and i'm pretty sure it's because there's something restorative happening. . .on a number of levels.

the physical, of course. there are many potential health benefits of bikram yoga. i feel stronger, better. more at home in my body. i'm having fewer back and neck problems, and the bursitis i've had in my foot for almost a year is finally healing. but the healing goes even deeper than that.

this past summer, i issued a cease-fire in the war between my body and me that i've been fighting for almost as long as i can remember, fighting against size and shape to fit into a culture where one of the highest honors possible is for a girl/woman to be called "little." i can still hear those feminine voices, thick with southern accents and with admiration, saying (and never about or to me), "look how tiny she is!" or "you are just the littlest thing, aren't you?" i'd imbibed the message that little = good down to the dregs.

while I truly enjoy physical activity (and participated in gymnastics, cheerleading, soccer in my teens), along the way, i turned exercise into a battle against flesh and blood, rather than treating it as something pleasurable and important to my overall well-being. and then my obsessive, compulsive eating got all tangled up in my obsessive, compulsive exercising. it was a hamster wheel, and i was running around in the same ol' circle and getting nowhere.

this past summer right around my birthday, i read geneen roth's book called women food and god in which she simply said, "drop the war with your body." I replied, "yes. yes, i will! i'm turning 37, and for the love, it's time to accept what the good Lord gave me."

my struggle with my body-image, as for most women, is a long story of shame and self-hatred and one i won't detail here. acceptance doesn't happen overnight, but it can and does happen, and it starts as most things start--with small, halting steps. one of those steps, for me, is changing the way i relate to food, and another one is practicing yoga.

i started bikram yoga in the fall at a great little studio downtown. not for the faint of heart, it is an intense practice in a bit of an extreme environment (a girl fainted in one of my classes last week!). but right away, i loved that in this form of yoga, you work hard, sweat buckets, but you also learn to rest, to be still, to breathe, to honor your body rather than punish it.

you also have to look at yourself in the mirror the whole time. in skin tight yoga clothes. there is nowhere to hide. turns out that this is a good thing. that first month, as i watched myself move in and out of the postures, i could see and, for the first time ever, be so grateful for what my body was capable of doing. also, there are lots of people of every size, and many of them wear itty bitty yoga clothes, like little swimsuit-sized items. and it. is. no. big. deal.

bikram is about opening your lungs, opening your heart and your body for the purpose of well-being. i love that this practice feels congruent with who i want to be in this world: living with intention and simplicity and openness, with kindness and acceptance toward myself and others. and as robert benson writes, "it is a life lived at attention that i seek."

and i love that this discipline has become a strange and wonderful kind of prayer for me. thomas merton wrote that meditation is "the idea of awakening our interior self and attuning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to his grace." while i'm not really meditating in the classical sense as i'm practicing my yoga, i am making use of the space and time for my physical and my interior self to be attuned to the spirit of God. my outward posture matches my inward posture as "i lift up my heart and my hands to you, o God."

it's a beautiful thing.

p.s. there's a whole theology of the body here that we could delve into, but i'll leave that to the more cerebral theologians. if such discussions interest you, here is an article my husband wrote on the topic.

p.p.s. i love this open letter to a new student.

p.p.p.s: just so you know:

hats off to gutenberg

2011-02-12T09:24:00.000-08:00

you know what i'm so glad about and grateful for? the invention of the printing press. i mean, what would i have done with myself before books were so accessible? (i do have some romantic ideas about having been a druidess, but really, what are the chances? more than likely i would have been some kind of under-servant in charge of the pigs.)

i think a good book is one of the things that makes life worth living. these are some of the books i have been reveling in or am planning to revel in this year:

what about you? what books are you delighting in?

dog is love

2011-02-08T05:30:00.000-08:00

is it wrong to admit that i often prefer the company of dogs over people?

meet my dog daisy. she is part golden retriever, part poodle and 100% enfp on the myers-briggs and a 4 on the enneagram. her inner dialogue goes something like this: "ohmygosh, i love these people. i want to sit right next to these people. or i want to lie down on their feet while they're cooking supper or trying to empty the dishwasher. i don't care where i am as long as i can be near people. i love these people. do you love me? do you think i'm special? do ya, do ya, do ya? please scratch my ears and/or my belly and maybe take me for a jog." and so on.

daisy is the definition of goofy and endearing and cracks me up almost every day. except when she engages in obsessive licking of certain of her body parts. that does not amuse me.

wild card

2011-02-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

The Awful Rowing toward God
by anne sexton

i'm mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
this dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many different boats moored
at many different docks. . .

"on with it!" he says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play--can it be true--
a game of poker.
he calls me.
i win because i hold a royal straight flush.
he wins because he holds five aces.
a wild card had been announced
but i had not heard it
being in such a state of awe
when he took out the cards and dealt.
as he plunks down his five aces
and i sit grinning at my royal flush,
he starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of his mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that he doubles right over me
laughing a rejoice-chorus at our two triumphs.
then i laugh, the fishy dock laughs,
the sea laughs. the island laughs.
the absurd laughs.

dearest dealer,
i with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha ha
and lucky love.

let a joy keep you

2011-01-30T12:36:00.000-08:00

"let a joy keep you. reach out your hands and grab it when it runs by." ~carl sandburg

i have not been well lately, and i don't mean physically. i have felt burnt out, scooped out, empty. a shell of a woman, as i told winn melodramatically.

when i went on my annual january retreat a couple of weeks ago, i was ambitiously hoping i'd come back all better. didn't happen. but i did get to rest, to read, to stare catatonically at the wall, and that was lovely. and i got my word for the year. (i don't do resolutions, but i do like a theme or a hope for a new year).

i was hovering in between sleep and wakefulness the first morning i was at richmond hill (sleeping in--oh, bliss!), and this word materialized out of nowhere: play. not at all the direction i was heading, which made me trust it even more since it so clearly did not come from me, yet seemed to fit just so.

i'm not good at playing. i'm good at slogging through the muck of life, feeling pain and grief and dissonance and longing and loneliness. i'm good at being intense and serious. i'm good at being hard on myself. not so good at playing.

so you can see how i might need to devote some time to learning the art and discipline of play. part of what this means for me is letting go of the unnecessary "shoulds" in my life. simplifying. i've been doing some of that, and i feel lighter already.

another part of playing, for me, means paying attention and giving myself over to the things that bring me joy, that nourish me, make me laugh, make me wonder, move me in some way. so, i'm going to make use of this space for paying attention to beauty and life and love. every now and again, i'll post a picture of something or someone, a quotation, a word, an idea--little or big, ordinary or not so ordinary--things that i find delightful. this address on the world wide web will be a holding place, a kind of treasure box and photo album, so that i can ponder these things and hold them in my lil' heart.

all that being said, here's my first picture of something that i love:

this vintage-y tin mirror (which i clearly should have cleaned before taking a picture of, but now am too lazy to get out a paper towel and some windex, clean it, take another picture, upload it again, etc. i mean, who has the time or energy? see how i'm letting go of those crazy "shoulds"? ) i got from my favorite store downtown, o' suzannah. it just makes me so happy.

i looked at it longingly, wistfully for the better part of the past year, but the price tag on it said $79. yikes. but one magical day in mid-december, i strolled into o' suzannah, and this little gem was on the sale table, drastically reduced to a mere $29. naturally i snatched it right up. i took it to the front counter to pay before anyone else could get their grubby paws on it, and erin (probably the cutest shop girl in the world) told me that suzannah (the owner of course) had marked it down just moments before.

if that's not a christmas miracle, i don't know what is.

39 things i love about you

2010-11-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

(in honor of winn's 39th birthday today, i've compiled a special list.)

here you go, babe. happy birthday. you're my favorite.

1. you have one of the greatest minds of the 19th century. ok, so i told you that early in our marriage (proving once and for all that the same is not true of me, but in my defense, i was drunk on love, and it was the 1990's which can be confusing as far as centuries go), and even though i might not stand by the exact original statement, i do find the way you think and question and ponder everything pretty amazing.

2. the "i'm one handsome son of a gun" facial expression you make in the mirror when you know i'm watching you--cracks me up every time.

3. you know how to laugh and how to cry. i love that in a man.

4. you are so careful with how we save and spend our money. i don't always appreciate that in the moment (when I really want to get a rug that daisy hasn't chewed up or whatever), but it makes it possible for us to live in much healthier ways than we would if i were the chairperson of our budget committee.

5. the way you get on the floor and wrestle with wyatt and seth. and read to them. and tell them stories. and play ball with them in the backyard. and just basically love them with your whole heart.

6. ummm, that we have a wyatt and a seth.

7. i feel safer with you than i do with anyone else on the planet.

8. you take things to heart. words, people, places and ideas really matter to you.

9. your faith in God is deep and wide and inviting and compelling.

10. when i wake up in the morning with scary hair, bad breath and puffy eyes, you still find me totally irresistible.

11. how proud you are of yourself when you repair something in our house.

12. those times you come home and find me engrossed in a book when there's clearly at least an inch of dust on all our furniture and piles and piles of laundry, you don't see all the stuff that needs to be done and how i could have (should have) used my time to do them. you just see me doing something i love, and it makes you glad.

13. your "winnisms": the way you say "munsters" instead of monsters and "walcome" instead of "welcome" and "i might would" instead of "i might" or "i would," etc. ok, you caught me; i don't actually love your grammatical shenanigans, but i do find them endearing and funny.

14. your hands. (that's all i'd better say in this public forum. wink, wink.)

15. the relaxed, confident way you move into new situations and new places. you aren't immediately overwhelmed by everything like i am, and being with you teaches me to calm. the. hell. down.

16. you saw something in that scared, uptight, closed off girl i was when we met and first started dating that i didn't see in myself, and you've spent the past 16 years inviting the real me to emerge.

17. you pay attention to life.

18. you happily feed my addictions to things like candy, starbucks, diet coke and books, but you get in the way of my addiction to shame and guilt.

19. you really don't notice when i have a bad hair day or gain 5 pounds, but you daily notice the state of my heart.

20. you work so hard to take care of our family.

21. that light in your eye when you come up with a good idea.

22. your mouth. (see #14)

23. you walk on this earth with strength and boldness and humility.

24. you are fundamentally unable to lie to me, even if it's a "good" lie because you're trying to surprise me with something. you have too many tells. (or maybe i'm just that good. probably both.)

25. to paraphrase emily bronte, whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same.

26. you like to slow down and take the scenic route.

27. you are trustworthy in every way.

28. you know how to savor life, how "to suck the marrow" out of it.

29. you had me at hello, and you make me want to be a better person. for reals.

30. if i'm craving some particular food or drink, you will gladly go out and get it at any time of the day or night.

31. you believe in me.

32. the way you smell, even when you're sweaty. love it.

33. how excited you get when college football starts up every fall.

34. how you keep up with politics, sports, our finances, theology, your 3 jobs, people's stories, my crap, the details of wyatt and seth's days and a hundred other things. amazing.

35. your voice. the whole of my being responds to your voice.

36. i *heart* the way you dance, especially that move i like to refer to as "the toy soldier" but i think you intend to be some version of the robot. classic.

37. you're not afraid to make a scene in a public place. i roll my eyes and get embarrassed, but i secretly love it. i love the winsomeness and humor that compels you in times like those, and i love that you keep showing me it's ok to be silly.

38. your heart is generous and wise.

39. i could hang out with you all day every day, and it still wouldn't be enough.

motherhood

2010-05-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

my oldest is 8 today. i don't know how that happened, really. on the one hand, it seems like i've known wyatt my whole life; on the other, wasn't it just yesterday that i was buckling him into his car seat, tying his little shoes, putting him in his high chair? now he traps me in his very logical arguments, asks deep questions about God and the meaning of life, wants his hair long, has sleepovers with friends, reads harry potter, and pretty much thinks he runs the joint.

well, i figured that since it's wyatt's birthday--a day that always makes me reflect on how and when he came into this world and into our lives and changed us irrevocably--i'd post something i wrote a while back about motherhood.

happy birthday to my sweet and feisty wyatt.
_______________________________

I was completely and utterly unprepared for motherhood.

The nursery was ready. I’d painted it, twice actually because I didn’t like the first shade of green. Winn had assembled the crib, and we’d placed the furniture just so. I’d hung tiny clothes on tiny hangers, put diapers and lotion and ointment and powder on the changing table shelves. With a white marker, I’d written words on the walls, words like listen, become, grow, play, imagine, live, words that spoke of our hopes for this new little life on the way.

I’d read the books, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Baby Whisperer, and more, and I’d talked to other moms about things like formula vs. breast milk, natural birth vs. epidural, cloth diapers vs. disposable, brands of car seats, strollers, carriers, and the myriad of other details involved in bringing a baby into this world and into a home. We’d talked about the very real excitement, the joy, the beauty of becoming mothers, the sheer wonder of carrying life within us and the privilege of having these fresh, fragile little bodies and souls to nurture.

But still, I was completely unprepared. No one told me that my heart would break apart in a thousand ways and for a thousand reasons when I held my sons for the first time and that it would happen over and over again as I watched them grow. No one told me that motherhood is a long discipline in letting go. No one warned me of the unnerving, fierce, primal love that would take over my entire being. No one told me that once I became a mother, I would rarely--if ever-- take a completely carefree breath.

Maybe I just didn’t read the right books, but I didn’t hear much about how having children would seriously disrupt my marriage, tear apart my neat and tidy agendas (not to mention my house), make me look and feel like crap a good bit of the time, or how God could and would use motherhood to form me, to free me up more and more to become myself, to become the woman—in the words of author Robert Benson—God dreamed me into existence to be.

Also, I would’ve loved a heads up about the likelihood of stretch marks on my breasts. (seriously, what the hell?)

I wonder, though, if I’d known the cost of motherhood, would I have had the courage and the foolishness to risk it? Because here’s the thing: no matter how much I rant and rave (and I do a lot), no matter how many times I want to gouge my eyes out because of the chaos, stress, monotony, and sheer exhaustion inherent in motherhood, I wouldn’t change one single thing.

Anais Nin wrote these words: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” If I have the courage to allow it, motherhood can be a story of my own blossoming. It can be a profoundly formative journey, interwoven with pain, mystery and exquisite beauty. costly. priceless.

and oh, so unbelievably worth it.

favorite books of '09

2010-01-09T08:45:00.001-08:00

perhaps you don't know that reading is one of my all-time favorite things to do ever. well, it is, and i thought i'd pass along my best reads of this past year because if you're like me, you're always looking for good book recommendations. i'd love to hear what your favorites have been, too, so i can add them to my ever-growing must-read list.

and the winners are. . . [requisite drum roll]

in the non-fiction category:

1. reaching out by henri nouwen (this book wins best overall)
2. telling secrets by frederick buechner
3. everything belongs by richard rohr
4. praying the psalms by walter brueggeman
5. working the angles: the shape of pastoral integrity by eugene peterson

in the fiction category:

1. the enchanted april by elizabeth von arnim
2. manalive by g.k. chesterton
3. the help by katherine stockett
4. the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by mary ann shaffer and annie barrows
5. the elegance of the hedgehog by muriel barbery

a morning psalm

2009-12-10T06:16:00.001-08:00

He brought me forth also into a broad place. . . ~ps. 18:19

this is the second time this week that i've encountered the image of spaciousness. the first was several days ago when i was wrestling with fear over some words spoken about me. these words predicted a dire future, failure in my friendships and failure to be the kind of woman i hope i'm becoming. they hit hard and swiftly in that tender place deep inside.

i was doubled up in pain, metaphorically speaking. turned in on myself. but then it occurred to me (via the spirit of God, no doubt) that i don't have to live in the dark, cold cave of fear. those death-words do not have the power to create what is real. all i have to do is lift up my eyes, step out of the fear and step into the wide open space where love and hope dwell. there is room there, to breathe and to be, and light from the countenance of the One who loves me best.

when i lift up my face to him, i can safely ask, "do these words fit who you are forming me to be?"

his answer this time? a definitive no.

wyatt's poem

2009-11-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

burning silver and gold
by wyatt, age 7

my mom told me i was born in the night
when i was walking up the wall
her blood was my blood and
her food was my food.
i was soaking in the sweet dreams,
sleeping in the hospital.
the next morning
i was an inch taller and
i was growing. . .

my eyes were a burning silver and gold.

the next night i had a nightmare.
i called, "momma."
she would always come.

the spaciousness of the psalms

2009-11-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

indeed the world is a dangerous, frightening place, and i am upset for myself. ~walter brueggemann, praying the psalms

summertime left me with no time to write, not to mention the fact that my darling, beautiful children sucked the very will to live from me there toward the end. (i picture them behind the closed door of their room, high-fiveing each other and whispering, "yes! mission accomplished!") devious little stinkers.

but then the boys started back to school, and still i found myself unable to write anything on this little blog or anywhere else. the writing well has been dry, so very, very dry. i began shrugging my shoulders and saying to myself, "well, it was a good run. i enjoyed having a blog and doing a little writing while it lasted, but the gig is up." and then i progressed to thoughts on how self-indulgent my blog was and how narcissistic we all are as a culture to be posting our thoughts on the world wide web, as if. . . (some of that is true, but what's with the cynicism?)

i ruminated on annie dillard's question of what could you write to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality. i kept coming up empty. i got nothin.

until yesterday. i was reading walter brueggemann on praying the psalms, and i realized that at some point along the way, i'd begun to dismiss the questions and struggles of my own life and heart as trivial compared to the rest of the world's issues.

constant war, hunger, violence, millions of children around the world and in our own country trapped in sex slavery, the aids epidemic and the wake of orphaned children it leaves behind, unspeakable suffering everywhere i turn. in my lovely, wealthy city alone, there is a twenty-five percent poverty rate. twenty-five percent! i see homeless people around town almost everyday. and then there's the little boy down the street, who is now in foster care while his mom is in jail awaiting trial. it's all just too, too much.

what right do i have to wrestle with life? i have a wonderful husband, two great kids, good friends, a beautiful home, more than enough food, and i've just recently had a dream of mine come true: we were able to finish out our basement and turn some of the space into an office for me to meet with people for spiritual direction. i've been dreaming of this for years, and now it's a reality. so how dare i enrage the suffering world by my triviality?

the beauty of the psalms, though, is that they encompass, in their generous language, all of life and allow us--no, require us--to enter into our humanness with honesty wherever we find ourselves. all i had succeeded in doing by comparing my life with others (such a futile act anyway) was to start shutting down, pulling the plug on real engagement with life, with my heart, and with God. When I start to minimize and dismiss the questions of my own heart, then I am going to miss out on learning how to live the life God has given me with passion, with integrity, and with authenticity. (are we still allowed to use that word?) i am going to miss out on deeper intimacy with God and with the people around me, and i am going to become a small-souled kind of woman.

instead of shutting down, the psalms invite me to wrestle with the confusing realities of this world, to lament the atrocities that so many suffer, to question why not me?, and to also lament the fact that i, too, am in exile here, that i don't really know how to love or be loved, that i feel lost and alone and confused a good bit of the time.

the psalms also give room for celebration and joy, so i am going to repent of shutting down by celebrating my recent dream come true. i love, love, LOVE my new little office space, and i often find myself just sitting here in the basement with a full heart, so grateful for this quiet space and anticipating good things to come.

we like to move it, move it

2009-10-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

here's a little jewel for your viewing pleasure. the collier boys still like to break it down. . .

disorientation: same song, 438th verse

2009-06-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

i am trying to recover from the month of may, which was filled to the brim with sickness (all 4 of us), out-of-town company, a new puppy, seth's preschool graduation, wyatt's seventh birthday, end-of-the-school year festivities, and all the usual stuff in between.

i am also trying to transition into school's-out-summertime, and i feel a little panicky. seth was in preschool five mornings a week this past year, and wyatt was in school all day; that meant i had three glorious hours every weekday morning without someone saying my name over and over again, no constant fighting to referee, no games to invent for bored kids, no endless questions to answer. i had time to breathe, space to simply be, to pursue other pieces of who i am. that is all about to come to a screeching halt.

of course i love my boys. love them to distraction, actually, but i am--for good or ill-not one of those moms who, in the words of a friend, "love the dickens out of being a mom and smile all the ever-lovin time." i wish i were, but it is simply not the case. i love my solitude. i love silence. marrying those things with motherhood is one of the great challenges of my life these days.

as i stand on the verge of summer, i think of the way a theologian (walter brueggemann, i think) described the categories of the psalms: psalms of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. i am diving headlong into a psalm of disorientation, and i don't like it, not one bit. frankly, it feels like a kind of death.

it is a dying that i have to do, a dying to self, and i am not one to go gently into that good night. but this is the way love works, right? this is one of the greatest lessons motherhood has to offer me: that ultimately i am not my own, that life is not a story about me, that i have to lay down my life, in times and in seasons, in any number of ways, for the sake of another.

it is a struggle, though, which is the understatement of the year. thankfully, i have a couple of other mom friends here who are bumbling along like me. we are going to rage against the dying light together, keep each other's kids and each other company, drink coffee together, and maybe throw back the occasional much-needed margarita.

i have been in similar places before, and the surprising grace of it all is that once i enter into what is, once i let myself sink into the present and all the chaos and beauty it holds, all is well. it really is okay.

now. if i can only remember that.

new addition

2009-05-18T05:23:00.000-07:00

meet daisy, the newest member of the collier fam:

daisy is an 8 week old golden retriever/poodle mix, and she is adorable, as you can see. i am going to be the "calm assertive pack leader" that cesar milan, dog whisperer extraordinaire, encourages dog owners to be, despite the fact that i did refer to daisy as "devil dog" in the middle of the night. i didn't say it to her face, of course, just mumbled it as an aside. winn and i aren't getting as much sleep as one might hope.

this is where motherhood comes in handy, though. if there is one thing i've gleaned from having children (and i do suspect there's more than one thing), but if there is just one thing, it's that this season won't last all that long in the great scheme of things. my children did eventually learn to sleep through the night. they did eventually learn to use the potty appropriately. and i can just repeat the mantra i used when they were toddlers and i was completely strung out: "it won't always be this way. it won't always be this way. it won't always be this way." this works best if you stare out into space with a glazed, catatonic look on your face, repeat the mantra for several minutes, then reward yourself for the good job you're doing with a diet coke and some form of chocolate.

the morning of a new day

2009-04-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

have you heard josh garrels' music? if not, today is the day, my friend.

winn and our friend evan introduced me to him on ash wednesday of all days, and his song entitled "zion and babylon" became my soundtrack for lent. have a listen:

lent was a ruthless teacher for me this year, and i have been anticipating easter, hoping for a little light to break through my darkness. easter sunday came and went with no visible change, but over the course of this last week, there has been a shift, the slow dawning of a new day within and without. this brings me back to josh garrels.

his song "decision" has become my easter season soundtrack (i'm a one-song-at-a-time kind of girl). i hit replay over and over, and i turn the volume way up so that the bass is thumping (usually as I pick seth up from preschool and am in a sea of minivans, honda pilots, and suburbans, soccer moms everywhere, everywhere. i am one, too, so i mean no disrespect.) and i sing at the top of my lungs while--i am not ashamed to say--i get my groove on, baby. it's a celebration.

i love these lines especially:

i've been running through the night

towards the light, of the sun

now i'm free

bring a little love for me

i'm a dork and don't know how to post this particular song here, but if you download it from itunes, i think it's a dollar well spent.

repentance

2009-03-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

i came across this poem earlier, tucked away in a notebook that holds ideas and words that are precious to me, and it spoke of what repentance might look like for me these days.

i will not die an unlived life.

i will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

i choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

i choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom

goes on as fruit.

~ by dawna markova

mid-course correction

2009-03-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

i chose to give up chocolate for lent this year. since chocolate is one of my four food groups, i thought it would be an appropriate choice. but my experience so far has been rather anticlimactic.

it occurred to me this morning, after participating in some of my favorite obsessive behaviors, that perhaps i need to adjust my lenten fast. instead of chocolate, maybe i need to give up (1.) re-playing conversations over and over again in my head and (2.) looking at my ass in the mirror a thousand times a day to make sure it's still in the same zip code as the rest of me.

untitled

2009-03-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

on monday morning, we awoke to find that a lovely thick blanket of snow had fallen during the night. the boys were ecstatic that school was cancelled and hurried outside with winn as soon as they could to get some use out of those sleds of theirs.

they left without even telling me, and i wasn't sure where the search for the perfect sledding hill would lead them, but i thought oh well, i'll enjoy a little quiet before i trek out in the snow to find them.

it wasn't long before i heard the front door open and close. then i heard the rustling of a jacket and a little nose sniffling. i went to investigate and found that it was a little neighbor boy from up the street, a classmate of wyatt's. i invited him to come in and have some hot cocoa and he readily agreed. he was cold and had no gloves, hat, scarf or snow boots in this freezing weather, just his regular clothes and sneakers and a coat.

we sat at the table and sipped our hot drinks while he told me about his dog, first grade, his uncle that's staying at his house right now that he and his mom can't wait to get rid of, and the time he missed the bus last summer for day camp and had to walk across town by himself, all the while saying under his breath, "i'm not scared. i'm not scared. i'm not scared." he just turned seven last month. after about thirty minutes, he decided he was ready to brave the elements again. he put his shoes and coat back on, and out he went.

i looked out the window, still didn't see winn and the boys, and figured i could catch up on some emails and such, so i puttered around, doing my thing, drinking in the unusual silence for about half an hour.

next time i looked out the window, i did see my boys and some other neighbor kids sledding down the hill that's down and across the street a bit from our house. i didn't want to miss everything, so i was getting myself together to go outside when i heard the front door open and close. it was the neighbor boy again.

he told me he'd hit his head while sledding and came inside because he didn't want to get hurt again. he said he probably needed some more hot cocoa. in my rush to get outside, i didn't listen very well, and i said, "well, do you think you could come back outside with me to watch wyatt and seth for just a bit and then we could all come in and warm up?" he said sure.

but when he got to the front door, he just slid onto the floor in a little heap and started sobbing. "i'm so cold--i'm so cold--i can't feel my hands--i'm so cold--." alarmed, i rushed over to him, snatched him up, made him sit in front of our little gas fireplace, wrapped him up in a quilt, exchanged his sopping wet socks for some dry ones, and then fixed him another cup of hot cocoa. he came to the table, still wrapped in the quilt, to drink his cocoa and eat his animal crackers, and he gradually began to thaw out and warm up.

this time he told me, as we sipped our hot drinks, that the previous night he and his sister had called 911 because their parents were yelling and fighting and that at one point his dad was trying to choke his mom. he told me the police took his dad away and he hopes his dad doesn't come back. he told me that they will have to move away if his dad comes back. he doesn't want to move away because he likes his school and his friends. then we talked some more about his dog and about his art class at school and various other things until winn, wyatt and seth came home.

i am haunted by the image of this heartbroken little boy falling on my floor, crying, crying, this child who had come to the end of his rope, the end of himself, crying out for somebody to help him.

lent reflections

2009-03-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

"I am a sinner, and the Presbyterian church offers me a weekly chance to come clean, and to pray, along with others, what is termed a prayer of confession. But pastors can be so reluctant to use the word 'sin' that in church we end up confessing nothing except our highly developed capacity for denial. One week, for example, the confession began, 'Our communication with Jesus tends to be too infrequent to experience the transformation in our lives You want us to have,' which seems less a prayer than a memo from one professional to another. At such times I picture God as a wily writing teacher who leans across a table and says, not at all gently, 'Could you possibly be troubled to say what you mean?' It would be refreshing to answer, simply, 'I have sinned.'"

~from amazing grace: a vocabulary of faith by kathleen norris

sweet release

2009-02-16T06:25:00.000-08:00

new year's resolutions don't work for me (too much pressure and a setup for failure--who needs that?). instead, i generally like to choose a theme for each new year. i have named 2009 my Year of Releasing.

rewind to an evening in late november. the kids are in bed, finally. winn and i brew up some hot tea. inadvertently, we fall into a long-overdue, rather intense conversation. here's a snippet:

blah, blah, blah, blah. . .
[winn] "i'm bored with our marriage."
[me] "yeah, me, too."
long pause while we consider the alarming nature of what was just said.

as the conversation progressed, i realized that a big part of the problem was that i was holding some things against winn, keeping him on the hook, so to speak, for the ways he'd left me alone--physically and emotionally--over the past several years. (i have some tiny abandonment issues.) when i spoke the words aloud "i need to forgive you," there was the internal sense that the nail had just been hit on the head. winn had some things to forgive me for as well; namely for the way i'd been shutting him out and keeping him at arm's length. as the conversation came to a close, we noticed a subtle but profound change in the air between us. we'd stood on the edge of a precipice at one point, but then a door appeared before us, and we were walking toward it, hand in hand.

fast forward from there to the holidays. family comes to visit, and we go to visit family. at some point, there is yelling, hurt feelings, tears, frustrated attempts to understand one another, and one long, very important conversation where once again i realized that i'd been keeping someone i love on the hook for things they didn't even know they'd done. my gaping maw of a desire to be seen and understood for who i am had turned into an ugly demand to "give me what i want--or else." the desire to forgive and freaking let it go began to well up within me. there was a lot to let go of, and i didn't know how to do it, but i did know that i wanted to release this person from the heavy, dark weight of my disappointment and disapproval. why would i want to saddle someone with that?

during this time, "coincidentally," i was reading george eliot's novel adam bede. adam's father, an alcoholic who continually left his son to bear the responsibility of the family business and to care for his needy mother, dies early on in the story. adam wrestles with his anger toward his dad and regret for what could have been, and eliot writes, "when Death, that great reconciler, comes, it is never our tenderness we repent of, but our severity."

that sentence shot through me like an arrow. how terribly severe i'd become! severe, judgemental, critical, angry, bitter--these are not the words i want to describe me. it was painful to realize that in many respects, they did. and this posture that i had toward these people that i truly do want to love was hurting them. hurting me, too, now that i think of it.

the long process of repentance (which a professor of mine in grad school once defined as "coming home again. . .and again. . .and again. . .and again) began in me over the christmas holidays. Appropriate timing -- the kingdom of God was at hand. the word release kept coming to mind, and the act of releasing my family from my desires-turned-to-demands, to give up all claim that my hopes be fulfilled, left me with the sweet taste of freedom and lightness. there was more space inside me now.

now i'm a month and a half in, and this act of releasing is a bit more difficult than i anticipated. turns out there are multiple layers of things for me to release. but i am learning this: as i begin to let go of my demands to be seen/heard/understood/valued, etc., and release others from this enormous pressure, Jesus is, in turn, releasing me from the snarled up mess of my sin.

as thomas keating says in his book invitation to love, "all we have to do is open our minds and hearts and let go."

hello again.

2009-02-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

i told my life story yesterday at our new church. some of you know that i turn into a blubbering fool when i tell my story. some things never change, my friends.

we're supposed to give a brief 15 minute overview of our life--where we've come from/where we're going, etc. i knew that time limit would be challenging for me. i can do the 2 minute bio, or i can do the hour long extended version, and that's about it. but i thought oh well, i'll give it a try. i took my watch off and set it beside me when i started talking in an effort to be especially cognizant of the time, and when i looked down at my watch, 40 minutes had gone by! how, i ask, did that happen?

also, there was the blubbering. when i talk about how i lived for most of my 35 years--trapped in the small, dark, fearful false self--and how God has been rescuing, redeeming, healing me, i can't help but cry. i turn into a tearful, ugly-cry-face, inarticulate mess of a woman. some people cry along with me (which i love of course), and some people look at me like i've just landed on earth from the planet zorgon.

i've told my story many times, and after every time i tell it, the shame descends like a dark cloud. i feel so raw and vulnerable. did i say too much? did i not say enough? did i make any sense at all? did i come off looking like a total whacko? round and round and round i go with these questions and more until i'm dizzy and confused and totally worn out. this shame cycle used to be completely debilitating, but with each year that passes, i accept who i am a little bit more, and the lies don't stick quite as much.

the buzzards were circling again last night and this morning, and i have HAD it. first of all, did i move to charlottesville, virginia, just to pretend that i have it all together? hell no. is my goal in life to be as palatable as possible so everyone will like me? hell no. my heart is alive (ALIVE!), and that means i am going to be raw and emotional and messy and broken and yes, a little kooky. so what?

second, even though this is my story, i am neither the author nor the hero of it. so why am i making this all about me?

For the love.

what she said

2008-12-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

"now, rather than succumb to despair during my dry spells, i generally employ a prairie metaphor and think of it as a lifesaver, a dying down to the roots during a drought. although the grasses look dead, they are merely dormant, and the slightest bit of moisture will occasion a change."

~ from the quotidian mysteries: laundry, liturgy and "women's work"

by kathleen norris

random bits

2008-11-16T08:26:00.000-08:00

you may or may not have noticed that i haven't done much writing on my blog in a while. my apologies to my extensive fan base. ha. anyway, the reason i haven't written much is that the ol' well has run dry. so, until it fills back up again, i am taking a break.

in the meantime, here are some funny things my kids have said lately:

wyatt: is there a guy in the future that looks just like me only not wearing the same clothes?

me: whaaat?

wyatt: you know, is there a guy that's me, only older and wearing different clothes, in the future?

me: uhhhh, yeah, i guess so. yes.

wyatt: when i get to heaven, i'm going to ask God to take me on a field trip to the future.

me: so, seth, what do you want for christmas this year?

seth: some night vision goggles.

me: uhhh, i don't really know where to find those, buddy. is there something else you're wanting?

seth (accusingly): so, what you're telling me is that there's NOT a santa claus?

[the next day]

me: so, seth, what did you say were some things you wanted for christmas?

seth: a four-wheeler

me: ummm, those are really expensive, bud. i don't think that's going to happen.

seth (accusingly): so, there's NOT a santa claus.

anyone need a book recommendation?

2008-10-29T14:30:00.001-07:00

way to go, winn! i love it, and i love you.

worth more than a thousand words

2008-10-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

(going local)

lonely hearts club

2008-10-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

i think i have stumbled into phase 3 of this transition: loneliness.

there are several women here that i truly enjoy being around and am eagerly getting to know on a deeper level. oh, but the important work of friendship takes so long! and frankly, i miss the ease of relationships that began years ago, where together we have experienced heartache, joy, struggle, pain, laughter, and of course tears--all those shared experiences that only make good friendships richer and better. i miss the comfort of seasoned friendships where there is very little temptation to do the "please, please like me" dance because we already know we are loved, crazy baggage and all, and there is simply no need. i miss walking into dcf and feeling like i've come home, where there are people who are just as raw and broken and passionate and hungry for jesus as i am.

we've been able to spend time with some of our dear friends recently, friends whom we consider family. it's been refreshing and reorienting to be around them, and my heart has relaxed into this familiar geography of knowing and being known.

being known--this is all any of us ever really wants, isn't it?

5

2008-10-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

seth turned five years old this past tuesday, and here he is, looking like such a big guy. he's practically ready for college. seth continues to be in love with life, with good music, good food, and the ladies. he is generous, affectionate, funny, curious, compassionate, brave. i think he's pretty wonderful.

happy birthday, sweet seth. you bring immeasurable joy and light into our lives and into this world.

my love

2008-10-02T07:30:00.001-07:00

whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ emily bronte

winn and i celebrated our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. 11 years of marital bliss. well, bliss may be too strong of a word to cover all 11 years, but despite the turmoil that is inherent in a marriage (what is it that chesterton says--"the whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis"?), we have been wonderfully happy together on the whole. and even in those difficult times, i could not imagine struggling along with anyone but the man i did marry, a man whose heart is deep and wide and brave and who puts up quite cheerfully with an awful lot from little ol' me.

i was reading along in dorothy sayers' book busman's honeymoon recently and happened upon these beautifully exquisite words that perfectly capture what i feel toward winn:

"all my life i have been wandering in the dark--but now i have found your heart--and am satisfied. . . and what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?--i love you--i am at rest with you--i have come home."

yes. that's it. i am at home and at rest and in love with winn.

and now, thankfully, we are finally where we belong--with each other, of course--but also in virginia. surely we were destined to live in a state whose motto is this:

seth and jason mraz

2008-09-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

our soon-to-be-5 year old seth continues to hone his dance skills and has added some new moves to his repertoire. friends and family, enjoy.

p.s. jason mraz is coming to charlottesville next month--woohoo!

disorientation, phase two

2008-09-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

disoriented: having lost your bearings; confused as to time or place or personal identity. ~www.dictionary.com

my friend juli, who recently moved to nashville from clemson, blogged yesterday about the impact of moving to a new place. while she was blogging (eloquently and beautifully, i might add) about what she termed phase three, i was reflecting on my personal phase two of disorientation. this is one of the reasons juli and i are great friends--we are often on the same emotional page, which helps both of us feel a little less crazy and alone.

her phase three and my phase two are similar in that both include utter and complete exhaustion. phase one for me was the chaotic internal flailing around that began the day we moved here. phase two, as far as i can tell right now, is sheer exhaustion and the search for daily and weekly rhythms and routines. also, walking around with a soul that bruises as easily as an over-ripe georgia peach.

as i was leaving phase one and entering phase two a week or so ago, i hit The Wall (juli calls hers The Crash). i ran smack into this wall of intense fatigue so hard that i was sure something was medically wrong with me. am i anemic? did i suddenly develop hypothyroidism? serious hormonal imbalance? (well, scratch that one. it's a given.) has the brain tumor i've been anticipating for years become reality?

my mom moved past my hypochondria and gently suggested that perhaps the simple task of uprooting my entire household and family of four and moving to a new city and state and house and getting two boys adjusted to two different schools was enough to cause a girl to be a little tired. huh. maybe she's on to something. add to that my being a "highly sensitive person," and you've got some issues.

two things have helped in the last several days. one was sitting in a roomful of people on sunday night, noise and voices and distractions swirling around me, and being inexplicably, wordlessly reminded of who God created me to be, what he designed for me to offer in this world.

the second was sitting in a little pocket of quiet yesterday morning, thinking about how foggy and fuzzy my mind is right now and how much energy i've been fruitlessly devoting to trying to clear those mental clouds away. the internal voice that i'm learning to recognize as God's spirit asked, "why are you trying so hard to think your way out of this place? to process all this new with your brain? stop. move from your head down into your heart--that's where your clarity comes from." oohhhh. right.

somewhere inside, a little gate opened up, and the tears came back to the surface where they usually live in me. i hadn't cried since i've been here, and you know that's strange, weeping woman that i am. i cried in the afternoon when i talked on the phone with my mom and she told me a story of how God was speaking to her, healing her. i cried when i talked to winn at the dinner table after the boys had run off to play. i cried while winn and i watched a movie on tv (the holiday--have you seen it?)

i think that yesterday i gained a little of the ground i've lost in the excruciating process of moving. i reconnected a bit to my (raw, messy) heart. there's more to come, i hope. after all, this is only phase two.

new day

2008-09-02T05:39:00.000-07:00

i just dropped seth off at preschool. today is his first day, and he could barely get to sleep last night for all of his eager anticipation. his running dialogue this morning consisted of statements like: "i'm so excited to go to school today, mommy." a couple minutes later, "i know i've said this lots of times, but i'm so excited to go to school today, mommy." "i love my new backpack ... i've always wanted a backpack." and about five more times, "i'm so excited to go to school today, mommy." and when i finally said it's time to go, he said, "all right! let's hit it!"

much to his chagrin, i would not just drop him off at the front door of his preschool. i took him to his class, hugged him goodbye, and watched him walk into his room. he didn't look back. you gotta love that about seth, all that openness, the way he walks into something new with the expectation of good things.

now i am sitting in the mudhouse, a coffee shop on main. i have two more hours before i pick seth up from preschool, and i still don't know quite what to do with myself.

i want to be quiet. i want to listen and pay attention, to my own heart and to God's. but i've been so wound up for so long. (this is my way--to flail around, dramatically, chaotically, for a while in the face of change, great or small.)

i can feel that i'm in the latter stages of the flailing. i'm starting to settle down, settle in. and what's starting to bubble up in me is deep gratitude. i am in this city that i've dreamed of for months and months. my kids are adusting, slowly, but they are adjusting. winn is stepping into his place here with his trademark faith that is bold, humble, raw and with a heart that's alive and hopeful. we have a home that is beautiful and filled with light. i'm finding some friends, people whose eyes i can look into and see something familiar that lets me know we might just have something here, folks. one new friend invited me to be a part of her book club, one that is very exclusive and intellectual. (ok, i made that last part up, but a book club! how great is that?)

this was the concluding prayer this morning from the divine hours: Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: preserve me with your mighty power, that i may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all i do direct me to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. amen.

amen. he has brought me to this new day.

a whole lotta new

2008-08-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

supposedly, moving to a new place is on the top ten list of most stressful life events ever. i get that now. while i do love this new city so much and am eager to explore and learn and find my place, my nerves have been completely shot to hell. so, i'm going to keep this post short until i can gather my wits about me. (don't hold your breath.)

here are some notable items from the past couple of weeks here in charlottesville.

seth has learned to ride a bike.
i've found a new favorite coffee shop--the mudhouse (many thanks to erin for a first visit that was perfection).
i've found a new favorite pizza place--christian's pizza (pizza and coffee--these are things of critical importance to me).
i love our new home. this is the view i had the other day from our balcony:

we live within walking distance of downtown (this is very exciting to winn & me).
i have a new running route (this is not really all that exciting. it is a necessary evil. i'm wondering, my runner friends, when will the love of running kick in?)
i backed out of our garage one day last week and smacked right into the front of winn's car. didn't damage mine, but his was a different story.
most notable of all, wyatt started first grade today at his new school. he was very brave this morning. i tried to have a little pre-school chat about "our feelings," but when he said, "ohhhh noooo, not another 'special talk'!", i settled for a hug instead. here he is, ready to go:

more things i'll miss. . .

2008-07-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

corey's bigger than life, wide open heart. he's also the only person i know who cries as much as (and maybe a teeny bit more than) me. i like that in a guy.
juli's artistic funkiness, our cry sessions in starbucks, and her muppet laugh. plus, she thinks i'm funny.
suzanne's unfolding, courageous beauty
knox's eager posture toward life
shannon's vivacious presence, sense of humor, and that glorious red hair
stuart's generosity
jeromie and liz's deep desire to love and serve their community well (which they do!), and their sweet dog molly
amie's rich warmth--and boy, is she a great mom!
nathan's love of metaphor and our shared affection for/addiction to the bluth family
carin's selfless love for dcf's kids
amy sawyer's radiance and her poet's eyes
michael's unassuming genius and such deep, deep kindness
erin's sly wit, feistiness, and her tears
justin's wild and unself-conscious keyboard playing. also, the way he looks at me like i've just recently escaped from the looney bin.
ed's gentle strength, big teddybear heart, and the way he knows something about everything
curt's refusal to say anything with fewer words when it can be said with more words plus some good metaphors thrown in
andy's commentaries on pretty much anything
melissa's way of seeing what's most important
brittany's brittanyness
ryan's muffin creations
lindsey and john's journey into parenthood and sweet little henry who's scheduled to arrive at any moment
the dcf band's amazing music and heart that leads me into worship each sunday
dave's keen understanding that i have a built-in bs detector and i'm not afraid to use it
jen's bravery
rachel's attentive spirit
monica's voice
brandon's wide knowledge of and love for film and music

and oh, so much more. . .

clemson

2008-07-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

some things i'll miss:

our house that holds so many memories
watching the woods behind our house change with the seasons
bowman field
ancheaux's
dcf (duh)

some things i won't miss:

the infernal heat of late july and august
the half-assed winter
the extremely limited selection of restaurants and stores
the picture of me at walmart

posturing

2008-07-20T10:38:00.001-07:00

lately, as i've been cleaning out the unnecessary things we've accumulated over the years and packing up the necessary ones in order to move to charlottesville, virginia, i have felt the urge to either (a.) burst into hysterical laughter, (b.) burst into hysterical tears or (c.) hyperventilate. it seems i am on the edge of a full blown panic attack.

i am deeply attached here--to this place certainly, but more to these people that i've shared so much of life with during this long and beautiful and heart-wrenching season. the thought of detaching from them and being uprooted leaves me feeling like i can't breathe.

as i was driving to church this morning to inaugurate what can only be described as cryfest '08, i remembered the last time i stood at a crossroads and felt some panic. i was pregnant with my first son wyatt and was saying goodbye to life with just winn and me, almost 5 years of intimacy and harmony and freedom to jet off for the weekend or stay out late or sleep into the mid-morning hours, and preparing to say hello to life with another soul, a little human being solely dependent on winn and me for care and nurture and provision. panic seemed an appropriate response to such a daunting task as parenthood.

i was re-reading c.s. lewis's perelandra at the time, and ransom (the main character) and the green lady had an intriguing conversation about the foolishness of "clinging to the old good instead of taking the good that came." that idea hit home, and i thought, "i want to open my hands and let go of what has been so that i can receive the new gift that God is about to give us."

last week, a dear friend of mine reminded me about the importance of having an open-handed posture--that to have open hands to receive, we have to be willing to let go of the things we've been holding onto.

i find that my natural inclination is to cling with a death grip, but i know that deep down what i truly want is to pry open my hands, to let go of this season so that i can receive the good things God has for me next.

it's been pretty clear that God wants us in a new place, and in only a matter of days, i have to say goodbye to these precious people who have loved me and whom i have loved. this morning, when i thought about my inner posture and what i want it to be, the panic subsided a bit. something loosened up in my gut and around my lungs, and i could breathe a bit more freely.

there were still tears (this was our second-to-last sunday at dcf), and believe me when i say there will be more (possibly accompanied by the renting of garments and gnashing of teeth), but hopefully, there will also be the grace of releasing and the free fall of trusting in a God who has knit our hearts together for the long haul, no matter where we are geographically.

we will always be family.

the invitation to fly

2008-07-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

He found my Being – set it up –
Adjusted it to place –
Then carved his name – upon it –
And bade it to the East
~emily dickinson

mine is not a unique story in its over-arching theme--finding out who i am, who it is that God had in mind when he made me—that quintessential search for identity. we are all grappling with these types of questions, are we not? The difference in my story and yours is in the details.

for reasons better left unstated here and some of which i don’t even know, i am only in the last 9 years coming to a sense of my own personhood, my own sense of being. do you know what I’m saying? first, that most basic sense that i exist, and second, that it’s okay-- and not just okay, but profoundly good-- that i exist.

being and well-being.

these past years have been full of this struggle, this coming to be, this slow and painful and continuous unfolding. learning to lift my face up to Jesus to feel the light of his face upon me, learning to hold my space, learning to use my individual voice, learning to believe that what i have to offer this world is beautiful, learning to stand upright to face the pain of life, learning to be the mother of two beautiful boys while still being my own self, learning to live in freedom and hope, learning to be alive in the deepest sense.

so much of this has been played out against the backdrop of my beloved spiritual community here in clemson where i’ve lived for the past 6 ½ years. i harbor no illusion that the struggle is behind me, but i do have the sense that the bulk of it is behind me. Jesus has called me into being, and here i am. here i am. and now i am leaving this cocoon of sorts. i feel the invitation to fly.

i am a great fan of commemorating those things worth commemorating, and this exact point in my life—just turning 35, moving away from this place and all that it’s held for me, and moving into a brand new season—well, this seems like one of those times, don’t you think?

i love images, too. so much meaning, so many layers, so many unspoken words packed into one simple picture.

well, you know what i’m getting at, right? my new tattoo. it’s on my foot (which has a personal significance all its own). it’s a butterfly in profile, beautiful to me in its bold simplicity. the outline is colored in with red, a brave and passionate color.

i look down at it, and i remember. i remember it all.

little miracles

2008-06-30T08:15:00.001-07:00

miracle #1: last week, wyatt said, "i'm going outside to practice riding my two-wheeler" (as opposed to riding the other bike with training wheels). now, this may not seem like a big deal, but wyatt has had absolutely no interest in learning how to ride a bike. he has humored me a couple of times and ridden around our driveway with my hand on the back of his bike for all of two minutes before he gets bored and wants to do something else. so, anyway, when he said what he said, i replied, surprised and curious, "okay. sure."

about 10 minutes later, he and seth come busting through the door, all crazy energy and excitement. wyatt's face is lit up like a christmas tree and he tells me, "mommy. you're not going to believe this. i did it! i can ride a two-wheeler now!" beside him, seth nods and says, "it's true. i saw him." so we all rush outside to bear witness to this monumental event. here's a little snippet:

miracle #2: seth has learned to swim. and i mean swim. before we left for our vacation, i bought the boys snorkels at the dollar store. turns out that a snorkel is the magic ingredient in seth's recipe for how to swim. he put on his goggles, stuck the snorkel in his mouth, and started paddling around in the water like a pro. the snorkel and goggles combination helps him relax and let the water do most of the work. i took him to a pool in clemson last week, and he swam the entire length of the pool so many times that i lost count. in typical seth-fashion, he sang as he swam, and the sound was piped out through his snorkel for all of us to hear. a couple of times, he even stopped swimming to do a little underwater dance. i didn't catch that on video, sad to say, but i do have visual proof of the swimming.

miracle #3: this is my third post in less than a week. crazy, huh? i doubt if this will happen again anytime soon, since my life is about to become a tiny whirlwind of cardboard boxes, newspaper, and packing tape. but who knows? stranger things have happened.

35

2008-06-27T11:29:00.001-07:00

today is my birthday.

so far, it's been great. i slept in, then read for a little while until winn brought me breakfast in bed from starbucks--a mocha and a piece of coffee cake. yum. then winn, wyatt, and seth, and i all sat on the bed, crumpled covers all around us, while i opened some cards and gifts. the boys made me cards this year, which is the best. next, we got up, got ourselves together, and went to the pool. the combination of water and sunshine is one thing that always makes me happy. add to that two boys who have just learned to swim and whose laughter is one of my all-time favorite sounds, plus my adoring and adorable husband, well, a girl just can't go wrong.

winn just left to take the boys to a friend's house, and when he gets back, we--along with two of our favorite people--are going to leave for a night away in atlanta. (i just love hotels. . .and sleeping in. . .and not having to clean up). while we're there . . .mom, if you are reading this, this is probably a good stopping point for you. just click that little x at the top right of your screen. . .anyway, while we are there, three of us, including winn, are going to get tattoos. i'm so excited about that! then we'll do dinner, coffee, conversation, your basic enjoyable, delightful evening, and tomorrow juli and i will spend the day at the mall for our 4th annual summer shopping extravaganza. (we always do this right around my birthday so that i've got a nice little wad of birthday cash.)

all in all, can't think of a better way to spend my 35th birthday. this feels like a significant one, for some reason. i've got a ton of change coming my way, and i'm going to have to summon all my strength and depth of character and my 35 years to enter into it head-on.

my friend ginger sent me this great card that she framed for me. it says, "she packed up her potential and all she had learned, grabbed a cute pair of shoes and headed out to change a few things."

exactly. here's to being 35!

disney magic

2008-06-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

we were in orlando, florida, last week with family (my mom and her husband, winn's sister vonda, her husband jason, jason's aunt carlena, and our two nieces, kylie and brynlie). two of those days, we spent at the magic kingdom. wyatt and seth loved every minute of it, and seeing the joy on their faces was totally worth the sheer exhaustion and near heatstroke that was my experience.

this picture was taken right after we all rode thunder mountain. wyatt and seth officially love roller coasters.

other noteworthy experiences:

wyatt and seth were tall enough to ride space mountain (this is a BIG deal), and it didn't scare them one bit. seth's exact words, as we cruised to a stop, were "that wasn't crazy at all."

i have a bone to pick with the state of florida and the city of orlando about their road signage--or lack thereof. my mom and i were caught for 2 hours in the black hole of their intricate system of toll roads. it seemed like some kind of sinister plot to keep tourists lost and confused and shelling out money, and i'm not so sure it wasn't. i'm going to draft a letter to governor charlie crist asap.

there was an alligator in the lake beside our condos. my mom got her ire up just the teeniest bit and called the management about it. they said they hadn't had any complaints, and my mom said, "so if the alligator eats my two grandsons, that will be the first?"

seth has some new dance moves. he showed them off at a restaurant we went to that had live music. check it out:

adolescent angst

2008-06-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

recently, i've become facebook friends with several guys i went to high school with, and this simple act of "friending" them has brought up a host of memories.

high school was not a happy time for me. and while i had some good friends and was probably considered to be a part of the "popular" crowd, whatever that means, i was also accused of being a snob by a number of people. that was not an altogether unfair assessment. i was standoff-ish and rather self-righteous.

i particularly remember--to my absolute horror--saying to one guy when he asked me out: "i have standards, and you don't meet up to them." i can't tell you how mortified i am now that i said that to another human being. he was a friend and continued, with much grace, to be one even after my hateful, damaging words.

i don't think i actually was a snob. i didn't think i was better than everybody else; just the opposite, in fact. now that i have some perspective and have had some extensive therapy (thank God!), i realize that what was really going on in me was that i felt incredibly lost and alone and terribly afraid. i was trying to navigate life and adolescence on my own and had no language or frame of reference for the questions and issues that were surfacing in my mind and heart. my response was to try to bury these things as deeply as possible, pretend they didn't exist, and then to carefully craft a false self, one that enabled me to look like i was strong enough to handle whatever came my way. the fear was that i would be found out, seen for what i really was, so keeping my distance was key.

if only i'd know then what i know now: that underneath it all, we are all lost and afraid. we are all broken. and when we can admit that we don't have our shit together and we come out from behind the masks we've been wearing, well, then, we find a small band of people who really and truly see us and say, "yeah, me, too."

and then we're not so alone after all.

6 years old

2008-05-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

wyatt turned six yesterday, if you can believe it. the night before his birthday, i went up to his room while he was sleeping and just watched him for a while, trying to savor the last little bit of wyatt as a five year old.

he was born at 12:19 a.m. on memorial day of 2002. i stayed up all night long that first night of his life, looking at him. i couldn't take my eyes off of him--he was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen. the night before last, i felt like i could have stayed up all night again watching him, just drinking him in.

we celebrated his birthday this year by going to an atlanta braves game in atlanta this past weekend and by having a special birthday supper last night. corey and juli came, and so did davis, his best friend from school. he got to open the gift he was hoping for the most--a violin. he's been lobbying for it for over a month now and insists that he already knows how to play it. i'm not so sure. . .

thanks to my friend ginger who introduced me to mypublisher.com, i made wyatt a photobook of the past year of his life. at the end, i wrote down some of our favorite things about him. i'll list them here so you can get just a small picture of what an amazing kid this wyatt of ours is:

you are curious and inquisitive.
you love adventure.
you are brave and strong.
you are a truth detective.
you love people.
you pay attention.
you are fun to be with.
you love learning.
your desire is as big as the sky.
you dream and think and hope.
you love to run and run and run.
you are a great brother.
you are a good friend.
you are just what our family needs.

here's to a new year with my sweet and feisty 6 year old boy.

mother's day reflections

2008-05-11T10:43:00.001-07:00

if you know me, you know that i do not go around chirping about how wonderful motherhood is. you are, unfortunately, more likely to hear me griping about how my kids are driving me crazy. i love and adore my boys and would give my life for them in a heartbeat, but let's be honest. motherhood is a real stretch for me much of the time. so it was a bit surprising to me today when i realized what i was feeling in the midst of the sunday morning chaos: profoundly grateful--grateful for the experience that mothering is, how it has stretched and softened me and made me more me, and grateful for these two remarkable, astounding, miraculous lives in my care.

being a mother has turned out to be extraordinarily different from what i'd imagined. as wendy wright says in her book seasons of a family's life, "motherhood has been the most formative experience of my life." it's the best thing i've ever done, and also the absolute hardest. i've been covered with every imaginable bodily fluid. i've experienced the torture of sleep deprivation. i've had my body stretched beyond recognition. i've given up any claim to personal space and time. i've had two little people grabbing at me, saying my name over and over a thousand times a day, asking for everything and anything constantly for years now. but what is most awful [awe-full] about this whole parenting thing is that whether we know it or not, as parents we image God's heart to our children. (this, incidentally, is why so many of us have terribly distorted ideas about God. . .)

what a responsibility! the sheer effort alone to keep my boys physically alive is exhausting, and now i'm on display 24/7 as a picture of almighty God?! what kind of set-up is this?

but here's the thing. i'm going to screw up anyway--and have--so i might as well relax and love my boys as well as i can and trust and pray that God will be doing his restorative work along the way.

here's another thing. i teach them, but they teach me, too. an example: just last week, i yelled at seth for something (he has been downright fractious lately). i hate it when i lose my temper. i hate seeing how my angry words dim that light in my boys' eyes. so, a couple minutes later, i went over to him, sat down, and said, "seth, i'm really sorry for yelling at you." he looked at me, smiled that smile of his and answered, "i forgive you! i forgive you a thousand times." if that's not a picture of Christ's heart, then i don't know what is.

here are some of the other things wyatt and seth are teaching me:

RELAX, for God's sake.
if you see water in any form--lake, ocean, creek, mud puddle--by all means, get in it.
candy and popsicles are some of life's greatest pleasures.
it's okay to get messy.
play your drums as loudly as possible, and even open the window just so the neighbors can hear.
sing at the top of your lungs.
dance anywhere and everywhere.
sleep is over-rated.
play, play, play.
dream.
say what you think.
cry when it hurts.
band aids make you feel better--even if you don't have a boo boo.
skipping is fun.
yell "look at me!" when you're doing something noteworthy.
savor every moment.

so, this is happy mother's day to me. my heart is full.

recent conversations about God

2008-05-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

wyatt at bedtime several weeks ago: "i don't care what God looks like [a serious concern of his at times]; i love him, and i'm going to obey him. and [said with some serious attitude] i don't care what the devil looks like; i don't love him, and i'm not going to obey him!"

seth: "church is important. . .school, too. it's where we learn great things about God."

wyatt, looking out the car window at the sky: "the sun is like a little fire where God can warm himself."

a conversation seth and i had on a swing at the park this week:

seth: "i love God. . .but i don't know what he looks like."

me: "well, what do you see in your imagination when you think about him?"

seth: "he has a mustache."

me: "does he have a smile on his face?"

seth: "no, but he's laughing. kinda like 'ho ho ho.'"

one more. on the way to a t-ball game on monday, wyatt was asking me a question about God. i didn't understand his question and probably wouldn't have known how to answer it anyway. he finally gave up trying to explain and said, "nevermind. i'll just ask God when i get to heaven. Seth piped up and said something about the trinitarian nature of God, three in one, or something like that. . .

me: "that's right. there's God the father--

wyatt and seth together: "God the son, and God the holy spirit."

seth: "God the holy ghost."

wyatt: "ooooooh, you said a bad word! mommy, seth called God the holy ghost!"

me: "that's okay. that's just another name for the holy spirit."

silence for a moment. . .

seth in a very small voice: "holy cow."

wyatt: "ooooooh, you'd better not call God a holy cow! Mommy--"

impromptu haircut

2008-04-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

this afternoon wyatt and seth were happily playing with water guns on our deck when i came in the house just for a minute or so to check my email. it may have taken more than a minute, and i may have tootled around on the computer more than i'd planned. when i went back out to check on them, i discovered this little sight:

wyatt had "shampooed" seth's hair with bubble solution, drenched his clothes in the process, and had proceeded to give seth a haircut. and not just a little trim, either. this is the approximate length he cut off of seth's hair (and there was quite a bit of it on the deck):

i don't quite know yet what seth is going to look like with his new haircut. his hair was plastered to his head, and i sent him up to his room for Rest Time before it had time to dry. nevertheless, wyatt assured me that he made it look "really cool in the back."

we'll see.

g.k. chesterton is my homeboy

2008-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

i've just joined a facebook group with the above name.

i am so in love with g.k. right now. i've decided to affectionately refer to him as gil (the g. stands for gilbert). i read some of his father brown stories years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them, but several months ago picked up his book the man who was thursday. he had me at hello. well, it was actually the, but you know what i mean. then a couple of weeks ago, i read orthodoxy, probably his most well-known work. oh. my. gosh. i need to re-read it (and probably will many times over the years--there's so much to take in) because i sped through it for the sheer joy of reading what he was going to say next.

after that, i spied a little treasure at our library--appreciations and criticisms on the works of charles dickens by g.k. chesterton. one of my favorite writers talking about another one of my favorite writers? oh, bliss! i didn't read the whole thing (i mean, c'mon), but i did read several chapters and thought his comments on david copperfield were rich, beautiful, enlightening, and enlivening.

now, i'm making my way through heretics and love it almost as much as i love orthodoxy. he is a poet and a mystic and an intellectual and a romantic in the truest sense of the word. i feel this undercurrent in his writings like he's enjoying his own--and the universe's--private, good-natured joke. chesterton, as he says of one of his characters in the innocence of father brown, "was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men."

here are just some of my favorite quotes:

fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. it is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. i knew the magic beanstalk before i had tasted beans; i was sure of the man in the moon before i was certain of the moon. this was at one with all popular tradition. modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. that is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not 'appreciate nature,' because they said that nature was divine. old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old greeks could not see the trees for the dryads. --orthodoxy

and my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originially wise, for, according to christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world. --orthodoxy

joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the christian. . .there was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and i have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth. --orthodoxy

the whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. --criticisms and appreciations of the work of charles dickens

in this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. the supreme adventure is being born. there we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. --heretics

romance is the deepest thing in life; romance is deeper even than reality. --heretics

people wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. the reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. but life is always a novel. --heretics

for romance consists in thinking a thing more delightful because it is dangerous; it is a christian idea. --heretics

every face in the street has the incredible unexpectedness of a fairy-tale. --heretics

if we wish to understand [a place] it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. --heretics

the whole secret of the practical success of christendom lies in the christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled. for with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages. --heretics

and at the high altar of christianity there stands another figure, in whose hand is also a cup of the vine. 'drink' he says 'for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. drink, for this is my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. drink, for i know of whence you come and why. drink, for i know of when you go and where.' --heretics

wyatt lately

2008-04-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

here are a couple of recent pictures of wyatt that i absolutely love. he takes such deep joy in being outside, and i love seeing him all lit up from the inside out.

and just for good measure, here's a picture of seth, who takes joy in pretty much anything.

spring break '08

2008-04-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

spring break isn't the break it used to be. i'm exhausted after logging over 40 hours on the road. (thankfully, only about half of those were with our kids. otherwise, i'd be typing this from the looney bin.)

we went to memphis first, where my mom and her husband live. they had some of their friends over one night while we were there, and i stood around with 5 of my mom's friends, laughing, talking, telling stories. I realized that this, this group of women with their vivid, warm, diverse beauty, looking for all the world like an exotic arrangement of flowers indigenous only to this southern soil, and with their strong southern drawls as thick and sweet as honey, this is what i love about the south. there was something so comforting about being surrounded by such women.

i have a love/hate relationship with the south, so when i stumble into moments or things that remind me why i do love this part of the country, i store it away like a treasure.

we left our boys in memphis for several days so that winn and i could go to charlottesville, va, to look for a house. oh, charlottesville is beautiful right now, all decked out in the profuse pinkness of cherry trees in bloom.

the housing situation is a wee bit discouraging because the cost of living is so high there, and what we will have to pay to find a home similar to what we have now is almost obscene. nevertheless, we did see a couple of houses that we liked, and we certainly became more acquainted with the neighborhoods and the area of the city where we'd most like to live.

on our second day, our realtor took us to main street market, a little brick building that houses several business. our first stop in the market was albemarle baking company, where i had a chocolate eclair that was. . .well, orgasmic. seriously. next we walked through the seasonal cook, one of those kitchen shops that is full of beautiful and delightful things, and then into feast!, a small gourmet market where i sampled the best goat cheese i've ever tasted. it's from spain, and it's called montenebro. if you ever see it, grab it. if you can afford it, that is. it's about $30 a pound. we strolled past the flower shop, the organic meat market, the fish market, walked through orzo kitchen and wine bar (and winn and i went back there for dinner that night), and lastly, visited the chocolatier. naturally, i had to have a taste. it was chocolate perfection. what a fun experience (and welcome respite) this was, in the midst of the craziness of house-hunting!

the day after that, back on the road to memphis to gather up our boys. we spent another full day in memphis with family (my sister, brother-in-law, and their 4 boys live there, too), and then headed back home to south carolina.

oh, did i mention that i came down with a case of shingles during this trip? shingles of all things! for the love. it's true what they say--it is painful. and i made the mistake of looking it up on the internet where there are ghastly photographs of people with severe cases of shingles. i used up the last remaining bits of my energy completely freaking out.

no wonder i'm exhausted. a nap! a nap! my kingdom for a nap!

a race

2008-03-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

i ran in my first ever 5K race this morning! i am not what you'd call a runner, and i do realize that running 3 miles for some people is just a warmup, but to me, a woman whose workout consists of chasing after her kids and exercising to a dvd in her living room several times a week, this is a big deal.

i'm not gonna lie--i'm a little proud of myself. first of all, i ran almost the entire way. i stopped to walk for about 20 seconds right before i hit the mile 3 mark and then mustered up my last reserves of strength to continue on to the finish. second, my "training" consisted of jogging around my neighborhood a bit this past wednesday, before i was even planning on participating in the 5K. (signing up was a spur of the moment idea that emerged from a conversation with juli thursday morning.)

a hearty thanks goes to juli, who encouraged me to enter and who kept me on pace almost the entire way. and another great thanks to jenny who selflessly agreed to babysit the kids at the last minute (due to the original babysitter's unfortunate accident that landed her in the emergency room and winn's being out of town).

i finished in just under 32 minutes. the best thing was seeing wyatt and seth toward the end, waiting and watching for me to run past them to the finish line.

all in all, not a bad way to spend a saturday morning.

moving

2008-03-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

my family and i are going to be moving away this summer. this is a big part of what's going on in my life right now, and i was thinking it's a bit strange that i haven't said much about it here on this lil' blog of mine. so, i thought i'd share what i wrote recently in some information we sent out to some friends and family.

here goes:

It all started--for me--about two and a half years ago when we visited Charlottesville, Virginia, for the first time. I fell in love with the city, with its history, its Old South charm, its college town energy, its artistic, funky vibe, its plethora of used book stores and coffee shops (books and coffee—it almost doesn’t get any better than that for me).

There was one thing, though, that I didn’t love: the highbrow intellectualism not just in the university culture, but in the city as a whole. It intimidated me. I am most definitely an F (feeler) on the Myers-Briggs, not a T (thinker), so I felt a bit at a loss. (Now, mind you, I’m not stupid; I just think more with my heart and intuition than with my brain.) Still, I left Charlottesville with quite a favorable opinion.

Fast forward to this past summer. I was in Denver visiting two dear friends, and they were talking to me about how wonderful it would be if Winn and I could move back to Denver. I agreed with them—it would be wonderful. Denver was and is a sacred place to both Winn and me because of our experience there. Rebirth, healing, awakening, restoration, redemption, the call of the Wild, Life—all of these things we encountered in the two and half years we called Denver home.

Now, you may be asking, “why were you thinking of moving from Clemson?” Ah, excellent question. Winn and I have known for a while now that Clemson was not going to be a long-term home for us, for various reasons. The sense that we would leave felt confirmed by God, but we didn’t know how or when or where. We’ve just been waiting. And dreaming. (Winn dreaming mostly of Colorado.)

Back to last summer in Denver. As my friends talked about a possible move back to Denver for us, I thought, “Yes, it would be amazing to live close to two of my most favorite people in the world, to move back to this sacred ground, but. . .” There was some hesitation on my part. Deb noticed this and later said to me, “You know, Miska, your no about Denver is just as important as Winn’s yes.” What an unusual and wise thing to say! That got me thinking.

On the plane ride home, knowing that it would take a definite yes from me to leave this place I’ve grown to deeply love, I pondered Deb’s words and began to reflect with God about where in this world would my yes be? My heart first went to the southeast. Something about this part of the country feels like home to me, so I told God that. And then I said, “And if I’m going to narrow it down a little more, I really love Virginia. I don’t know why; I just do.” Pause. Then, “And as long as I’m voicing desire here, I might as well just go ahead and say that I really love the city of Charlottesville. I’m just putting that out there, God. Do with it what You will.”

That was in July. In September, Winn got a phone call from Chris, a friend who is a pastor/church planter/consultant in Virginia. Chris asked Winn if he knew anyone interested in planting a church in Charlottesville, VA. His answer: “Ummm, are you kidding?”

A number of conversations followed, then a visit to Charlottesville, and another visit. More conversations. All the while, Winn and I felt carried along by God in this crazy process. Church planting hadn’t been something we’d been thinking about, but as the opportunity unfolded, it felt strangely compelling. And as we got deeper in, it began to feel even more like God was pulling (or pushing—I’m not sure) us along, pointing to this particular place in Virginia and this risky proposition, and asking, “Will you obey Me? Will you serve this city in My name and for the sake of My kingdom?”

Well, that’s not much of a choice, is it? Our hearts burned within us; that’s the only way I know to describe it. This city, the church plant, the timing—all felt like a convergence of our gifts and our desires. We didn't dare say anything but yes, despite the ever-present questions and the fears.

What is especially beautiful to me is what God has been doing in me over the last couple of years: an increasing acceptance of who God dreamed me into existence to be, an obedience to His call to step into my true self, a reclaiming of things in me that had been lost and damaged. I have felt and do feel God’s call for me to minister to those whose minds and hearts are divided, to those who have been deeply wounded, to those who feel their brokenness and want to find life and healing. I can do this in Charlottesville, in ways that I could not have done it two and a half years ago. I’m not intimidated anymore by the intellectualism of the city. I can see it for what it is now—something good that can become just another elaborate way of hiding. Fig leaves, if you will.

Frederick Buechner says that our calling or vocation in this life is where “our deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Charlottesville, we believe, is that place for us now, that place where our particular energy and passion—our gifts—meet a deep need in a context and a culture that we love.

*if you'd be interested in receiving the mailing we sent out, just let me know.

alleluia. Christ is risen.

2008-03-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

He is risen, indeed. alleluia.

easter egg hunting. . .

may your easter be filled with the joy and hope of the resurrection.

mayday, mayday

2008-03-20T08:11:00.001-07:00

last saturday i got my hair cut. i went in knowing that i wanted my hair to be quite a bit shorter, and i took 2 pictures of myself from years ago when we lived in denver, pictures of when i loved my short hair and before i started all this "trying to grow it out" nonsense.

as i've said, i'm in the process of accepting myself more, accepting who God created me to be, and that even translates to my hair. i'm accepting the fact that i'm a short hair kind of girl (my hair is just happier that way). plus, i feel like i'm entering into a whole new season, a combination of some inner healing and our upcoming move to virginia. so i wanted a bold statement, a transformation of my "look" to symbolize the inner transformation i feel taking place.

and bold is what i got. unfortunately, i wasn't planning on being quite that bold. my trusty hair stylist interpreted my pictures in a different way than i was expecting and cut my hair very, very short. when i realized how much she cut off, i started the downward spiral into panic. i called winn on the way home to prepare him that i was totally spinning out of control, all the while doing my deep breathing exercises in a futile attempt to calm the growing anxiety. i frantically tried to figure out a way to hide out for a week or two so that my hair could grow at least a tiny bit before i had to show myself in public. to no avail. the next day was sunday, and i was scheduled to participate in the church service, which meant i had to get up in front of EVERYONE. oh dear God, what was i to do?

what could i do? nothing, really. you know the saying "there's no use crying over spilt milk"? well, the same thing applies here. i felt helpless and trapped and so very exposed.

what is it about us women and our hair? what exactly does it symbolize for us? i've been puzzled about this because i've realized yet again (in the midst of what i can only describe as trauma) the deep and powerful meaning it holds for us as women, or at least for me and every single woman i've ever talked to.

it represents, i think, our beauty and how we feel about ourselves. john eldredge once wrote that every woman is in some way either searching for or running from her beauty. i think i do both. i'm constantly searching for physical beauty--trying to find just the right hairstyle, keeping up with my workout plan, looking for the latest skin cream or that perfect pair of jeans, etc., while simultaneously denying my inner beauty. much of the time, i don't really believe any inner beauty exists, which is why i spend so much time trying to fool the world with some semblance of the outward.

if i can charm or distract you with some kind of beauty on the outside, then maybe, just maybe you won't look any deeper to find that it is all an illusion. i'll keep rejection at bay.

this is the heart of why The Haircut Gone Awry was so traumatic. my intense reaction was connected to those deep, hidden feelings that at my core i am ugly and undesirable.

i spent far too much emotional energy and time completely freaking out on saturday. i was in crisis--as usual an identity crisis (this is my specialty). what eventually helped, after praying repeatedly that God would make my hair grow overnight ("i know you can do this sort of thing, God!") and realizing that this is not how God usually works in my life, was looking up to Jesus and listening to him, instead of to my own diseased inner dialogue.

i can't say that i really heard anything; i didn't get that "healing word" that made it all better. but being in His presence was healing, in a very quiet way. i had the sense that He was smiling at me, slightly amused at all my needless turmoil. and i was reminded of when He has spoken to me those healing words, when He has told me who i am, and that my identity has nothing at all to do with how long or short my hair is.

so, i woke up sunday morning, looked in the mirror and shrugged. i am becoming a bit more reconciled to the new look, and find that at some angles and in a certain light, my hair is actually kind of cute.

home sweet home

2008-03-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

there's a for sale sign in my front yard.

i don't quite know how i feel about that. i suppose bittersweet is the word. i know it's time for change since it seems evident that God is moving us along (to charlottesville, va, for those of you who don't know), and i'm truly excited about that. but i also know that i've sunk my roots pretty deep into this red clay, into our one-of-a-kind church community, and into this plot of ground on east camelia lane.

i've lived a lot of life here in this house o' mine. this is where i became a mother and where we brought our baby boys after they were born. this is where winn and i clawed our way back to each other after the tumultuous disruption of having children, when we were as distant from each other as we've ever been. this is where wyatt and seth learned to crawl, walk, talk, talk back, dance, where they've grown into the crazy, exuberant, alive little people they are today.

and oh, the conversations i've had here over the past six years! rich, beautiful conversations with people brave enough and honest enough to share their mess, their brokenness, their joy, their tears and raucous laughter. these are the conversations i love most in the world, and the people who have offered themselves in this way have given me a gift beyond measure.

it's here in this house that i've felt the full gamut of life: the sorrow of loss; bright flashes of joy; that keen, doubled-over feeling of loneliness; sweet companionship; the dark blue of depression; mind-numbing fear; tenacious love; the fragile spark of hope; the rich sense of life happening all around and within me. such a unique mix of love and grief.

it is here, with these walls as witness, where i've become more of who i really am. what a long and arduous process that is! brings to mind the story of eustace, the boy who turns into a dragon in c.s. lewis' book the voyage of the dawn treader. he scrapes and scratches off layer after layer of dragon skin in an effort to find himself again, until finally aslan shows up and takes his big claws and rips that obstinate outer shell away. what is left is delicate, pink flesh that aslan then baptizes in a pool of cool, refreshing water.

the things about this house that i've cursed at over the years are becoming dear to me now, as my time here draws to a close. these walls have encompassed me in my journey. this house has been a haven.

it is never a small thing to leave the place you've called home.

new friend/windy city

2008-03-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

i spent the weekend in chicago visiting my new friend ginger. she and i met this past october when she and her family were visiting south carolina; we talked for all of five minutes after church that sunday and hit it off. we've only emailed since then and talked on the phone once or twice, but have really enjoyed getting to know each other. we figured it was time to actually have some conversations in person.

it was a bit like a blind date, really, and i was a little nervous going into the weekend. (what if it's weird? what if we totally do not get along?) but when i walked up to her at the baggage claim, it was surprisingly normal. just like, "oh, there you are, friend."

we had a great time together. we spent the first night in downtown chicago--went to a wonderful restaurant, putzed around a shopping center called water tower place, sat in starbucks and talked while we sipped our coffee. the next morning we had breakfast at the hotel, and then walked around outside for a while. it was cold but lovely, with snowflakes swirling around above us in the wind. what was also beautiful was the four-story gap and the three-story crate and barrel. naturally, i had to investigate those little gems.

then we went to ginger's house in naperville. while her adorable son bauer napped, ginger and her husband tj and i sat around and talked and read. it was the perfect lazy sunday afternoon. later, we all went to downtown naperville, which is right down the street from their cute little house. we got a pizza from their favorite pizza place, and our dessert was cookie dough from this place called cookie dough creations. they have eight different kinds of cookie dough, if you can believe it. it was all delicious.

the next morning, ginger made us all one of her famous smoothies, and then she took me to the airport. it was great to be away, and it was great to come home again. i felt refreshed and ready to jump back into my life. i also feel like i've solidified a friendship. i'm definitely adding her to my collection.

on the verge

2008-02-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

the other day at sunset, my boys, who are four and five, came bursting through the front door, shouting “mommy, come quick! you have GOT to see this!” i hurriedly put on my shoes and followed them outside. they led me to a certain spot in our yard where we planted daffodils a couple of years ago. we bent down toward the ground in order to see better in the fading light and studied the brand new green shoots and yellow buds of this year’s promise of spring.

one of them said gleefully, “spring is coming!” seth made each of us point out our favorite daffodil bud, and said, “oh yeah, that’s a good one” in response to our selections. we stood there awhile longer, quiet and watchful.

there is the knowledge that at any moment these tight buds will burst open into full flower.

i feel the same way.

gettin' down, collier style

2008-02-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

wyatt and seth are dancing to fergie's "here i come." this is what passes for cheap entertainment at our house.

the quality of light

2008-02-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

i had a hell of a weekend. seriously. i really cannot think of any other way to describe it than with the words spiritual oppression. darkness, heaviness, confusion, nebulous fear, loss of sleep, all connected to this feeling that i was fighting something or in the middle of some kind of battle. walking around in this weird weirdness, i didn’t really even know what was going on until about two-thirds of the way through it.

by the time sunday morning rolled around, i was exhausted, and on top of everything else, angry. i was catching on to this whole oppression thing, feeling the threat of its evil in my home, toward my family. i was the live example of the saying “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” and trust me, you don’t want to be the brunt of my anger.

naturally, trying to get myself and wyatt and seth ready for church was not a pleasant experience--for any of us. add to that: bad hair, bad skin, bad attitude. the only thing I had going for me as i walked into church were the kick-ass boots I was wearing.

i sang the songs, offered and received the peace of Christ, listened to nathan’s truth-and-hope-filled sermon. somewhere in the middle of all that, some light broke through. the Light broke through. it was almost like waking up from a dream, or rather, a nightmare, this sense of returning to myself and to life as I know it. my mind cleared, the heaviness lifted, i could breathe again.

i was scheduled as one of the four deacons to serve communion. i love serving communion. it is one of my all-time favorite things to do—to participate in this most holy and mysterious of sacraments, to stand and offer each person a piece of bread and to speak the words “this is the body of Christ, broken for you.”

now, i am always near tears when i serve communion. (i cry often, but you already know that, right?) i try to push through the tears, though, so that i can say the words i love to say, and most times, i succeed. this past sunday, despite the raw condition of my mind and heart, i made it through without crying. almost. we were nearing the end of communion; the line was short. but when i looked up and saw my friend erin coming toward me, the dam broke.

erin is hilarious, tender-hearted, full of depth and life. although we are still in the early stages of getting to know each other, we have one of those "connections." there is something alike in us that makes us a part of the same tribe. (this may be news to her, I don’t know. i haven’t really discussed it with her yet.) when I saw erin, something did break in me, or perhaps was invited out of me. i cried for all of the sadness and fear and weariness and disappointment from the weekend. and i cried for the beauty and redemption found in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Eucharist, meaning grateful, thankful.

so, for the rest of communion, i stood in front of the church and cried. in times past, this would have deeply embarrassed me. i would have felt shame equivalent to walking around with the back of my dress tucked up into my panties. i don’t feel that anymore. i’m becoming more reconciled to myself, tears and all. this is who I am: love it or leave it, baby.

last night i had coffee with my friend juli, who is balm to my soul, and i found affirmation and hope in our conversation. now i am reading anne lamott, one of my favorite authors. reading her is like eating my favorite candy (hot tamales or sour patch kids, depending on which day you catch me).

i’m pretty worn out today, and i can feel a headache coming on. but i can see some light, and that’s enough. for now.

breaking bread

2008-02-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

i'm making my vanilla challah bread today. since it takes about half a day to make, seth and i started on it after we dropped wyatt off at school this morning.

i love making bread, even though i don't do it that often. i love the yeasty smell of the dough, the feel of it in my hands, and the simplicity of the process: take some flour, salt, water, yeast, and a couple other ingredients, and when you're finished, you've got something wholesome, earthy, and delicious.

i also love the physicality of kneading the dough--you have to put your whole body into it. i pinched off a small piece of dough for seth to have, and we went to work, kneading and kneading and kneading. we danced a little while we did this, listening to shelby lynne's version of i only want to be with you and john mayer's say. when the ten minutes of kneading were up, seth said, "thank God."

now we are waiting. i even like this part. i like that things are happening in that lump of dough, things that i can't see or understand. i periodically lift up the corner of the damp towel covering the bowl, and i can see that change is taking place. it seems so surprising and miraculous. i know there's a perfectly good explanation for this chemical process, but i prefer not to be bothered with the facts. i like the mystery.

in about forty minutes, i will divide the dough into three parts, roll each of those parts into long ropes, and then braid. i'll brush the braided dough with a mixture of egg yolk and salt and slide it into a hot, hot oven. it will bake for about half an hour, rising up even more and turning a lovely golden brown.

this yummy loaf of bread will feed my family tonight, along with the corn chowder i plan to make later. i'd like to be able to say that dinner will be a peaceful, harmonious affair, but i know only too well that wyatt will loudly and obstinately remind me that he, for one, doesn't like corn chowder and then at some point, seth and wyatt will start to argue.

no matter. i revel in these simple pleasures.

ash wednesday reflections

2008-02-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

from girl meets god by lauren winner:

"i cried, i think, because i was coming to understand in a new way just how much was required of me, how much God was going to strip away all my everything, like silver polish taking the tarnish off old forks. i cried because i know more and more how chekov was right, how we are all running around desperate to make connections with one another, but mostly we are all just estranged. because i know more and more that this glass here is so very dark, that this really is a long loneliness, that it is both lonely and long.

sometimes i feel God has taken a paring knife to me. i know the way an apple feels."

feverish

2008-02-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

wyatt, my five year old, has had a fever off and on for the past three days. he's home from school today, so we are trying to keep things pretty mellow, watching an assortment of animated movies and whatever is on the disney channel while he lies on the couch. seth, my four year old, is the only hitch in the "staying mellow" plan, what with his boundless energy and endless motion.

wyatt is so pitiful when he has a fever. since our thermometer is broken right now, i don't actually know what his temperature is, but i don't have to look at a thermometer to know that he has a fever. one reason is that when he gets a fever, he gets a really high fever. he radiates heat. also, i can just do the "mom test"--feel his forehead with my cheek and look at his eyes. when i was little, my mom could just look at my eyes and know that i was sick. i didn't really understand how she did that back then, but now i get it.

to tell the truth, it's kind of nice when wyatt is sick with a fever virus. as i told winn the other night, wyatt is so tame right now. that fierce, intense energy he carries with him has gone underground, is dormant for however long his fever lasts. instead, he is calm, affectionate, gracious even.

wyatt uses so much of his energy to argue and/or negotiate with seemingly every single thing i say. we gave him his name because it means "warrior," but somehow this kind of "warring" (with me) wasn't exactly what i'd envisioned. i'm hoping this is a stage, that some day in the future, this fierceness, which i believe is a really good thing, won't be directed my way quite so much. but then again, those teenage years will be here before i know it. . .

well, wyatt is asking for food. he's also starting to argue with his brother. that's a good sign.

the power of a post-it

2008-01-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

we were the victims of a hit and run. actually, it was a random act of kindness kind of hit and run.

we awoke yesterday to find that our entire garage door was covered with hundreds of yellow post-it notes with written messages like "we love you," "you speak hope," "you speak healing," and my personal favorite, "miska rocks."

there was no sign or clue as to who performed this crazy act of grace. we discreetly asked around at church, but no one fessed up or even looked remotely guilty. beware. these people are still at large. . .

so, i'm sending out a thank you to these anonymous folks, hoping they will read this:

the amount of time and patience it must have taken you to write on and affix all of those notes to our garage door speaks volumes itself, and your written words to us were powerful and life-giving. we did feel so loved, and our kids--well, i wish you could have seen how lit up they were from the inside out while we read note after note after note. thank you, thank you for blessing us with such thoughtfulness and creative kindness. thank you for saying that we matter. (isn't that just the message we all so long to hear?) may you experience the love and delight of Christ toward you in the days to come.

some one-liners from the week

2008-01-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

wyatt anticipating his first "mad scientists" club meeting at school: "we get to make lasers that kill people."

seth while i was washing dishes: "your booty looks good in those pants, mama."

wyatt after attending the barack obama rally: "i'm definitely voting for barack obama. definitely."

seth while i was helping him zip up his jacket: "you're my best mommy."

wyatt riding in the car with winn: "i'm going to ask God to build a million playgrounds in heaven."

a song

2008-01-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

my brother gave winn and me an itunes gift card for christmas, so i've been downloading some tunes lately. i’m particularly enjoying howie day’s collide, john mayer’s say, and colbie caillat’s magic.

but the song that is playing in my mind so much these days is a song we've sung at church several times called how he loves, written by john mark mcmillan. he wrote this song the day after his best friend steven died, and you can hear him tell the story on youtube. It’s a powerful song born out of heartbreak and hope.

I absolutely love and savor the images in the song:

loves like a hurricane
i am a tree bending beneath the weight of
his wind and mercy

if grace is an ocean we’re all sinking
when heaven meets earth like a sloppy, wet kiss

but the lines that get me every time are these:

i don’t have time to maintain these regrets
when I think about the way
he loves us

boy, do I maintain my regrets—in the sense of maintaining a garden or a beloved plant. I tend, prune, nurture, only there’s nothing beautiful or life-giving about it. my self-doubts and self-recriminations take up a good bit of space inside me, although thankfully, God is slowly and incrementally reclaiming that space. as i sing and listen to these lines, i am pulled up and out of my small self and into the magnificent Love that is God. I stop obsessing, if even just for a moment, about my own damn self and am bathed in God's deep, abiding love for me and this world. once again, i am reminded that life is not a story about me, and a sweet, surprising freedom rushes in.

the soundtrack in my mind for the past several days has been this song. i think maybe, just maybe God’s trying to tell me something.

snow much fun

2008-01-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

it's a snow day! this morning as wyatt bundled up to go outside, he declared, "this is the best winter ever!"

oh, the joy

2008-01-16T06:19:00.001-08:00

this morning i drove through clemson's brand new (and only, for those of you who live elsewhere) starbucks. just seeing it there on the corner of college avenue makes me so happy. and having a tall nonfat mocha in my very own little hands--well, i'm almost delirious with pleasure.

the one and only downside is the herculean effort it takes not to turn in every time i drive by.

ancient question

2008-01-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

"what dwells in your soul this day?"

sadness. i'm grieving the loss of my dog tucker. we had to give him away because of his random acts of aggression; we didn't feel like we could really trust him anymore around our kids or their friends. but i loved him. he was my buddy, my constant shadow, even if--as some of you know all too well--he was needy and neurotic. (but who among us isn't?) he went to new jersey, of all places, to a great cocker spaniel rescue where he will eventually be placed in a good home without small children. i miss him terribly and still can't talk about him without crying.

fear. winn drove away at the ungodly hour of 3:00 a.m. so that he could catch a plane to denver. i tossed and turned until the alarm went off at 6:20. fear had me in a stranglehold; fear that winn would have a car wreck on the way to the airport in atlanta, fear that his plane would crash--again, that fear of unspeakable loss. i was so afraid that it was hard to breathe. i started the day exhausted.

hope. after i dropped seth off at preschool, i came home and sat down at my kitchen table with a cup of hot tea. i did a bit of reading, and then i spent some time in silence with God. i prayed not with words, but with my imagination, which is so much easier for me. i saw the heavy load this fear was, how i was carrying a weight that was two or three times my size, and i knew to set it down. the darkness from it clung to me, though, like a shadowy cloak. it was only when Jesus came and took my hand, pulled me away, that the cloak fell to the ground. the message i heard was simple: this is not who you are. there was a subtle shift in me, and things felt a bit lighter.

quiet. i moved through the rest of my day with a quietness of soul. i had to run a couple of errands after i picked seth up, and as a little treat for him, i drove through "old macdonald's," as he calls it, and got him a happy meal. he got a toy in it that overjoyed him. i said yes to his request to visit petsmart. he and wyatt both love to visit the cats, the gerbils and hamsters, the birds, the fish. oh, there was an adorable kitty there i wish i could have adopted! so precious. i talked on the phone to my soul sister amy walker, who is truly one of the funniest people i know. then seth and i picked wyatt up from school, and after a snack and a little bit of playing, we took a lovely siesta. we woke up refreshed, played some video games together, made supper together, and read together.

love. i talked to winn on the phone tonight just for a couple of minutes; it's so wonderful to hear his voice and heart, especially when he's away. then my baby brother called (he loves it when i call him that. don't you, josh?), and we talked for over two hours. that felt like a gift.

panic. i have a whole new crop of gray hair growing in, and every time i look in the mirror, there's more. 2008 is definitely going to be the year i start coloring my hair.

gotta have faith

2008-01-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

“Without thy help, we could not face unafraid the year before us."

i love to celebrate. any excuse will do, really. i especially love to celebrate those times that commemorate the end of one season and the start of a new one (birthdays, weddings, etc.), so you’d think ringing in a brand new year would be one of those celebrations that thrill my soul.

you’d think.

as 2008 approached, i noticed that my internal response was not so much joy and anticipation as fear. fear of what this new year would bring, what catastrophes and losses, what disasters would hit unannounced and without proper preparation.

you might know this about me: i am always imagining the worst. i routinely make emergency response plans in my mind, for when a tornado hits (grab the kids and run to the bathtub), for when our home is invaded by thieves or worse (baseball bat by my bed, a big knife in the kitchen, and if need be, secret hideouts), for when a fire breaks out in our home (grab the kids, the dog, the photos, the computer hard drive). the list goes on. this is why i was so excited when my mom and stepdad gave winn a tool for christmas that is made specifically to help a person get out of a car under water (seatbelt cutter and a sharp end to crack glass—all in one handy tool!). winn opened it and was slightly incredulous. when i saw what it was, i literally clapped my hands i was so happy. finally! i’ve worried about that exact scenario since i almost daily drive over at least one of the two bridges in our town. how would i get my kids out of the car if we suddenly careened off the bridge and plummeted into the water? (as anne lamott writes, my mind is "a neighborhood i shouldn't go into alone.")

so a whole year stretching out before me, the unknown future, was causing me some anxiety. some of this fear stems from having had the bottom fall out of my world once. my worst-case scenario did become reality. it was years ago, but i find myself, in some sense, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. and now the stakes are so much higher: i’m married to the love of my life, and i have two of the most precious boys you’ll ever know. so much loss is possible. this world is a minefield, with chaos and pain around every corner.

at its source, my fear is not so unique, though. what i’m ultimately afraid of is that God’s heart toward me is not good, that he doesn’t have my best interest at heart, that i’m totally on my own in this life.

my head knows these fears are not true, but it’s taking a while to trickle down to my heart. it’s also difficult to reconcile that my definitions of “good” and “love” are not necessarily God’s definitions of these words.

so, each new year, each new season, each new relationship even, is an opportunity for me to learn to trust in the Love that is the center of this universe. i can’t spend all of my energy trying to manage and control and prepare and negotiate. well, i could, i guess, but who wants to live like that? i want to live with my hands and arms wide open, with my heart open to life and to God. that is going to require some faith and courage.

i recently read the entry for january 1 in God Calling, a book written by two anonymous women who simply wanted to be known as “two listeners.” the contents are the result of these women devoting time and space to sit and listen to the voice of God’s Spirit a portion of each day for an entire year. what they heard the Spirit say on the first day of that year was this:

“I stand between the years. The Light of My Presence is flung across the year to come—the radiance of the Sun of Righteousness. Backward, over the past year, is My Shadow thrown, hiding trouble and sorrow and disappointment.
Dwell not on the past—only on the present. Only use the past as the trees use My Sunlight to absorb it, to make from it in after days the warming fire-rays. So store only the blessings from Me, the Light of the World. Encourage yourselves by the thought of these.
Bury every fear of the future. . .and let us leave them all, buried, and go forward to a new and risen life.
Remember that you must not see as the world sees. I hold the year in My Hands—in trust for you. But I shall guide you one day at a time.
Leave the rest with Me. You must not anticipate the gift by fears or thoughts of the days ahead.
And for each day I shall supply the wisdom and the strength." --God Calling, ed. by A. J. Russell

my favorite gift

2008-01-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

one of our christmas traditions is for winn and me to make each other a gift. this year, after we'd opened all of our gifts, winn said he had one more gift for me. he pulled me into our walk-in closet that doubles as an "office" and turned on the computer monitor. there was my blog--and a brand new, unbelievably beautiful title banner. winn designed it (with some consulting help from our friend andy--thanks, andy!) and had somehow uploaded it to my blog in the wee hours of the night while i was sleeping.

isn't it fabulous?

my christmas miracle

2007-12-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

scheduled opening: jan. 11, 2008

to you and your kid

2007-12-17T16:59:00.000-08:00

it's wyatt's turn to do a little christmas caroling, and he improvises a big finish as only a five year old boy can.

joy to the world

2007-12-16T19:41:00.000-08:00

here's a bit of christmas caroling from seth. he got a little confused with the words, but never lost his trademark joy.

when i ask seth what he wants for christmas, i always get a different answer. the last time i asked him, he said: a cool soccer ball with a picture of fire on it. . .soccer shoes. . .presents, just presents. . .the sky to be beautiful. . .for tucker [our dog] to be cool. . .a new house. this was just a couple of days after i asked him what he would ask santa for at the mall. he thought for a moment and then said, "a hug." wyatt, our son whose desire is insatiable, has a list about five pages long. number one on the list is a four-wheeler. oh dear. i'm afraid santa isn't going to be able to bring that this year. or ever.

reading is my favorite

2007-12-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

i've had it up to here with the neck and back pain i've felt for the past week. i simply turned to look at something last wednesday morning, fully expecting my neck to function as normal, when in a sudden act of rebellion, it locked up on me. the next day, the pain traveled down to the left side of my upper back, and now it seems to be spreading to the other side of my upper back and to my lower back. my muscles are in knots! i visited the doctor last week and almost wept with gratitude when he prescribed me some muscle relaxers. unfortunately, they are not working as well as one might hope. i'm afraid the doctor grossly underestimated how wound up and high-strung i am (i tend to come across as a calm, steady person) and prescribed me something a bit too mild. i've got a call in to his office. . .in the meantime, i am one cranky mama.

on another note, i've recently started re-reading one of my all-time favorite books: david copperfield by charles dickens. david is an old friend of mine. don't you feel like some of your most beloved books (along with the characters in them) are friends to you? there have been times in my life when these books have been a kind of lifeline to me, when they've kept my imagination alive, when they've given me words and images that helped me to interpret my life--the pain and sorrow, the joy and dreams--when they've whispered something of god to me that i wasn't hearing anywhere else at the time. so, i return to them again and again and get blissfully lost in their pages.

here are some of my most notable friends:

david copperfield (david copperfield by charles dickens)
jane eyre (jane eyre by charlotte bronte)
scout (to kill a mockingbird by harper lee)
ransom (c. s. lewis' space trilogy)
lucy, edmund, peter, & susan (chronicles of narnia)
anne lamott (as herself in her non-fiction books)

what about you?

fear and trembling

2007-11-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

i am scheduled to speak at my church this coming sunday. i actually asked for this opportunity, but am now re-thinking that silly little request. the thought of getting up in front of everybody and talking for an extended period of time scares the sh*t out of me. seriously.

but then i remember why i asked to do this. here are some of my words from an email i wrote pertaining to my request:

"over the past 5 - 6 years, god has been calling me out. out of fear, out of shame, out of feelings of worthlessness and uselessness, out of my self-protective sin. calling me to step into the unique woman that he dreamed me into existence to be. and so, these days i am "working out my salvation" by recognizing and using my particular voice (which was silenced for far too many years); by living out my particular calling; and by gathering up my courage and obeying the voice of the spirit of god within me. so, the opportunity to speak would be redemptive for me, and i believe that when god is doing his redemptive, restorative work, he intends for the spiritual community to share in it."

oh, for the sweet love of god. [she said with great fear and trembling.]

i welcome your prayers.

actually. . .

2007-11-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

seth this morning: "actually, mommy, i don't want to be a doctor when i grow up. i want to be a surfer."

after what was to him an absolutely thrilling career day at kindergarten, wyatt has decided that he wants to be a scientist who works with chemicals.

energy

2007-11-15T10:44:00.001-08:00

i was talking on the phone today to the wise and beautiful woman who is my mentor, and i was telling her about what has been happening in my soul recently (see previous post). she commiserated with me, said she has dealt with something similar these past days.

she said it this way: "something or someone has laid claim to the energy of my soul, and i have cooperated."

exactly.

everything's the worst

2007-11-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

i spent most of monday, after a disappointing and difficult weekend, raging against the machine that is my life. monday is the day seth and i do various errands and go to walmart to get groceries for the week. the amount of time and energy this seemingly simple task takes is absolutely obscene, especially when you are dealing with a four-year-old who is on steroids for medical purposes. i felt like my whole morning was shot; that, in fact, the entire world was conspiring against me to keep me from doing the things that i really wanted to do by keeping me busy with endless, inconsequential tasks, like getting groceries for my family so we have food to eat and cleaning my home so that we don't live in a complete pig sty and doing laundry so my children will have clean clothes to wear. I was all but shaking my fist at the sky.

i finally wore myself out, and in my worn out state, i was able to get a tiny bit of clarity. clearly, something else was going on.

i'm realizing that i've been over-extending, over-committing myself these past couple of months. you may know this about me, but i am not a person who thrives on lots of activity and social events. i thrive on simplicity, and i have lost my way this fall.

it's amazing how often i fall victim to the lie that to be a valued member of society (and--dare i say it--the church), one has to step onto the hamster wheel of endless activity. especially since i'm a stay-at-home mom. i mean, really, what else do i have to do? aren't my days full of lying on the couch and eating bon bons? and i did think when wyatt started kindergarten this fall and seth started back to preschool three mornings a week that wow! i have so much time now! not so, my friend. not so.

i will spare you further details of my angst. this i know: i want to live with simplicity. i want to remember that it is a sacred thing to create meals for my family, to wash their clothes, to make the beds. it is a sacred thing to carve out time and space to play with my children rather than toss them the scraps of my attention. it is a sacred thing to have energy to give to my husband and to nurture our relationship. it's okay--and necessary!--to take the time to nurture my own inner life, by which i mean my spiritual life.

As Anne Lamott writes, "'no' is a complete sentence." i'm going to start saying it more.

today

2007-11-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

seth: when i grow up, i'm going to be a super hero. or maybe just a doctor.

revolutions

2007-11-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

how is it that the revolutions
and the rotations
of the earth are speeding up?
wasn't it just yesterday
that i cradled these boys of mine
in my arms?
now i lift their sturdy frames
and something catches in my lower back;
i carry them and their legs
hang down to my knees.
wasn't it just yesterday
that their little feet
fit inside the palm of my hand?
their feet are still small,
comparatively speaking,
but now they call to mind
the feet of a large puppy,
maybe a great dane
or a st. bernard.

my boys have not stopped lifting
their tear-stained faces
to me for comfort;
they have not stopped opening
their arms wide-spread to be held.

sometimes when i'm doing the
simplest of things with them--
walking outside as day
draws to an end,
pouring a cup of milk,
tying a shoe,
washing dirty smudges off a face--
time stops.
i am filled with the knowledge that
this
moment
this
season
so precious beyond language,
will pass,
will fade away
like smoke from a bright-burning fire,
and soon i will not be
their sun anymore.

the long experience of love

2007-11-06T08:14:00.001-08:00

the impermanence of things is where my mind goes these autumn days. i watch the leaves change their colors one day and then fall to the ground on what seems like the next. the end of something is near.

specifically for me, i've been pondering how quickly my boys are growing up, how this particular season of their childhood will be over before i know it, and how heartbreaking it is to let go bit by bit of something i can never hold on to, no matter how desperately i try.

i read this last night by rainer maria rilke:

. . .Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love, --just what is wholly
unsayable.

a favorite author

2007-10-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

"it is a life lived at attention that i seek, a life in which prayer has woven itself into the very fabric of my days. . ."

"it is our brokenness, perhaps even our willingness to be broken, that holds the key to whatever it is we have to share."

--robert benson, living prayer

deliver me

2007-10-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

i have a splitting headache. i suspect much of it has to do with my re-addiction (is that a word?) to diet coke (caffeine) and the fact that i haven't had much today. it may also have to do with the major meltdown wyatt had this afternoon. he cried angrily and loudly, yelled, argued (did i mention the crying?) for what seemed like forever until he just wore himself out and went to sleep. now i'm trying very hard not to gorge myself with the chocolate cake that's in my kitchen.

the things i run to for comfort and rest. . .sheesh.

it all leaves me empty and wanting more.

case of the crazies

2007-10-19T14:23:00.001-07:00

i dropped my kindergartener wyatt off at school this morning and watched him walk away into this wide world armed only with his backpack and lunchbox. he looked so small beside all those big kids. i took seth to the doctor for his four year old checkup and physically held him down while the nurse gave him four shots. he screamed and kicked and yelled, "somebody, please help me!" i said good morning to my darling husband who returned home late last night from his third trip in the last four weeks. i took seth to eat at mcdonald's as a treat for making it through a traumatic experience. i took wyatt out for ice cream after i picked him up from school so that we could spend some time together, just the two of us. he's been so angry lately, and i wanted to give him some undivided attention. i took my crazy (literally) dog out to do his business countless times and made sure he had all his little needs met. i talked on the phone to a dear and wise friend for about an hour. i joined facebook and spent an inordinate amount of time holed up in our computer closet editing my profile and asking to be friends with people and checking out other people's facebook pages.

all the while i'm feeling dizzy from weeks of endless activity and lonely from disconnection with friends, with god, with my heart. add to that the sense that something in my interior life is shifting, something good happening that i'd like to explore.

my husband has been looking at me strangely tonight. he knows the signs of when i've had too much to do and too little time and space to be quiet. i get a little crazy. well, crazier than usual.

this is one of those days when the rotation of the earth feels overwhelming.

2 more additions to the previous list. . .

2007-10-18T13:55:00.001-07:00

apoplectic
uncanny

some of my favorite words. . .

2007-10-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

quotidian
preposterous
tomfoolery
plethora
astonishing
superfluous
queue
ass

guitars and god

2007-10-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

my baby turned 4 on Sunday. seth is going to be great at being 4. he is the most generous, open-hearted, intuitive, filled-to-the-brim-with-joy little person i know. he is also capable of wicked temper tantrums. the other day i told him to brush his teeth and go to the potty. pretty basic stuff, right? he threw himself down on the floor and lamented loudly, with tears and gnashing of teeth, "i caaaaaaaaan't!! i'm too tiiiiiiiiiiiiired!" (for the sweet love. . .) he's rather given to extremes, but most days i find that endearing. i love a guy who can own his emotions.

yesterday, he was playing along on his new electric guitar. he stopped for a moment. then he held up his right hand--his strumming hand--looked at it, and said almost reverently, "i feel god in here." intrigued, i asked, "really? what does it feel like?" his response: "i don't know. just feels like god."

love that.

she walks into the room. . .

2007-10-05T12:35:00.001-07:00

well, here goes. i'm finally joining the millions of people who journal their thoughts and opinions for all the world to see. (narcissism, anyone?) i hope for this to be my little spot to keep friends and family updated on the life and times of the colliers. i may also submit you to my sometimes coherent musings on the nature of life, God, motherhood, personhood, pleasure, pain, and all that jazz. i need a place to practice my writing because (this may be a surprise to some of you) i have big plans to write the next great american novel. don't hold your breath, though. i'm a little short on time these days. speaking of, i've got to go make sure my children are not dismantling the house.

so, welcome! hope you enjoy your stay and come back soon.