Category Archives: Family

In the world ye shall have tribulation…

Posted on by under Family, Life, Religion/Spirituality

As I was driving home from a birth on Christmas Eve, I reflected on the acute time of struggle that my family was in with the thought that this Christmas did not seem “Merry”.  The trials of life sometimes come as rivulets, uncaring what time of year or season they are flowing through with their cares and concerns winding through the small places of our lives and hearts.  Christmas came with weariness this year.  I was sapped from being in and out of hospitals with my infant son and my elderly father with serious respiratory complications after having the flu sweep through our whole family.  Juggling a hardware store, midwifery business, and care-taking a family of 10 (including my parents), life was brimming-to-overflowing.  How was I to feel about a Christmas that didn’t feel Merry looking towards a New Year that may or may not be Happy?

This moment of driving on Christmas eve offered me a pause and I realized that Christ was Incarnate into this world, the one filled with struggle and hardship.  I was poignantly aware of the darkness both around and within and frightened by the sight, saw also that perhaps in this present awareness I could also see Christ more clearly rather than less.  The reality of the Incarnation piercing the darkness of a cave with the Divine Light as so many Incarnation icons depict – I could resonate with that more this year than ever before.  

The tribulations in the universe, world, country, state, community, family, and mine own heart are so very many – enough to drown and confuse and overwhelm.  “….but I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)  This Christ-child, God-become-Man, entered into the tribulation and the darkness could not contain Him for He pierced it with Himself, the true Light.  

Since writing the above, my 8 month-old son was hospitalized again, this time with RSV.  After his need exceeded what our local hospital could provide, they transported him to Reno where he was admitted to the pediatric ICU for a week.  I have had more time than usual to pray and think about the presence of God in seasons of trial.  I listened to the words of the Psalms, so many of which are crying out for God’s mercy and attention and often in moments of desperation and great need, as reflected in Psalm 76 (77):

1 With my voice unto the Lord have I cried, with my voice unto God,

and He was attentive unto me.

2 In the day of mine affliction I sought out God,

with my hands upraised by night before Him, and I was not deceived. 

7 Will the Lord then cast me off unto the ages,

and will He be favourable no more? 

8 Or will He cut off His mercy unto the end?

Hath He brought to an end His word from generation to generation? 

9 Or will the Lord forget to be merciful?

Or in His wrath will He shut up His compassions for ever? 

11 I remembered the works of the Lord;

for I will remember Thy wonders from the beginning. 

12 And I will meditate on all Thy works, and I shall ponder upon Thy ways. 

13 O God, in the sanctuary is Thy way. What God is as great as our God?

Thou art God Who workest wonders. 

So often through the Psalms to we hear the cry for God to incline His ear and the fear of being forgotten or being “cast off” in days of affliction.  At this moment, I can see with clarity how the affliction prods us to seek out God, to throw ourselves upon His feet as the unclean woman, seeking His healing touch.  For in our weakness, vulnerability, pain, and laden by the burdens which assail us, we come to the end of ourselves and our ability.  In times like this, we can see our utter dependance on the mercy of Christ without the scales and passions that so often blind us to this reality.  Our every breath and utterance is of God, given by Him in the right here and now.  This eternal truth pierces our temporal being more deeply when we find ourselves helpless.

The resounding truth throughout Scripture, the life of Christ, the Church, and the lives of the Saints would teach us that the narrow path, the ladder of divine ascent, the journey towards Theosis are not traveled with ease and temporal comforts.  Rather, they are received through suffering and finding God’s mercy and grace in the humbling place where we must look up to see the Light that shines in darkness, He Who has overcome the world.  

“Master and Lord, do not allow any temptation or sorrow or sickness which is beyond my strength to come upon me, but rather deliver me from them, or else grant me the might to bear them with thanksgiving.” (St. Simeon the New Theologian)

What I wish I’d known when I had my first child…and second

Posted on by under Family, Life, Musings

It is 12:51pm on a Saturday.  Saturdays are extra-chore days, so the house is clean (relatively speaking, that is, for a child-filled home) and supper is in the crock pot.  The 1-year-old is asleep, the olders are reading quietly behind a closed door in the “blue room”.  In approximately 32 minutes, the 4-year-old will get tired of reading and I’ll begin hearing the blue room transformed into a jungle, or desert, or whatever they want it to be today.  They will make-believe, using shoes for bird nests, animals for friends, and trucks for magical spaceships for another 80ish minutes.  Did you do the math?  Almost two hours at my disposal.

Rewind a handful of years.  I had my precious strong daughter who refused to sleep through the night until 17 months old (as in, waking up every 2 hrs to nurse, which it turns out, doesn’t actually allow for REM at all).  When she developed upright mobility at 10 months, I got pregnant again because, you know, I thought it would be a good idea to be throwing up while my toddler was putting forks in outlets and unwinding every roll of toilet paper in the house.  At 7 months pregnant, overwhelmed with not having slept in 547 nights and trying every known “method” for getting a child to sleep through the night, I tried the dreaded cry-it-out method.  That lovely daughter of mine screamed for 5 hours straight.  BUT, by night 4, she slept through.  I did mention that she’s quite strong, didn’t I? (My husband has the great luck of sleeping through all amounts of mayhem, but believe me, those hours of screaming were tortuous).

If you have one child, or two, hear this: your work is totally, all-encompassingly exhausting.  Your body is tired, your soul is fatigued with no oasis in sight, and your mind, well it has atrophied to a minuscule size.  It can seem like drowning in your own life and you may question if this is really what you wanted.  Our society doesn’t help this at all, by the way.  Expectations, comparisons, unhelpful “mom groups” that make you feel like you’re failing, and Facebook with edited pictures to make you feel insecure and insufficient.  How many times have we been talking about a bad day or difficulty with your child and gotten the response, “oh, just wait until your kids ________”.  Not helpful.

So, to you I would repeat, it does get easier.  But maybe not for the reasons we tend to think of.  It gets easier because that sleepless boobie-monster firstborn starts growing up and making her own bed, getting wipes and diapers for you, sets the table, and even gets tall enough to take the baby out of the crib for you (one less trip upstairs while your octopus hands are full!).  It gets easier because your older children begin having natural consequences for their actions that don’t always have to be imposed by you & then you get to shepherd the conversation in their wake.  But mostly, it gets easier because you start tuning out what everyone else does and can tune in to what you do.  You still need and want input and wisdom on so many things that come up, but you have the basics down because they’ve been born through the fire of the first two children.

The other biggie: grace.  Just like starting anything new, there’s a learning curve.  (Unlike many things, the learning curve of motherhood never ends…).  As the children come, with all their anecdotal glories, grace becomes a more practiced necessity.  Grace with oneself, grace with your mate, grace with your children, grace from the creation around you, grace from God.  Remember when you thought you were a pretty great person while single and realized how difficult you were to live with when you were a few years into a solid relationship?  That’s similar in the parenting sphere, only the honing and sharpening comes from these little poopy humans you brought into the world.  Let me tell you, grace is needed from and in every direction.

Now it’s 1:24 and I have at least 45 minutes left to be alone, to meditate, to do whatever it is that refreshes me.  I wish that I’d known that this time would come, it may have helped the long days and longer nights of my firstborn.

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2016, you were cracked

Posted on by under Family, Life, Musings, Uncategorized

“The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man.”

I sit in my lovely rocking chair watching the snow fall hard and gently outside, warmed by the the ever-changing orange glow of the fire beside me.  My friend, a dear 93-year-old man, gave this chair to me as a gift.  His wife of oh so many years had rocked in it as he composed piano concertos in their living room.  It’s one of my most precious belongings.

I feel the warmth of the egg nog coffee in my hands.  I rock. I think.  The New Year always comes with a cosmic musefulness to it.  I allow myself to wander and remember.  This time last year, my internal world was crumbling.  Too much doing and not enough being.  Too long picking up other people’s pieces and imagining I was holding them together.  That weight became heavier than my frame could bear and in revolt, my insides raised a white flag with as much subtlety as  stampeding buffalo.  Even now, I feel the emotions swell within me as I venture to recount those months – but today, with a new year ahead, I take the time to be a part of the swell, to feel what I didn’t have the capacity to feel back then.  Each emotion is so vivid, strengthened by the suppression.  (Never be fooled, putting emotions into dungeons only gives them more strength, a loudening static deep within making it increasingly difficult to live in the present).

In the difficult months of the early year, I can now see how much beauty lay there as well.  My lover became a stronghold for me and our children as he gently dealt with all the details of our life.  He not only took care of our three children, but also did all the mundane things which make life move – the laundry, the shopping (guess who didn’t set foot in a grocery store for 3 months!), the toddler mediation, the baby rocking.  He let me (made me) rest.  Through those long weeks, he was directing me to “do whatever was nourishing in the moment”.  I would read a book until it became tiring, then stop.  I would sleep for hours in the midday. I would walk or run or roller blade whenever it struck me to.  In that valley, our friendship and marriage were fortified into a mountain.  We had luxurious amounts of time together as a couple and as a family.  We made a new family friendship that was fast and furious and deep.  We planned for a new adventure ahead.  These things were beautiful and good.  I want to remember that they were the result of the struggle because vision is so often found in the valleys.

In the whirlwind of Spring, we moved a couple thousand miles from Dallas to a place in Northern California you’ve never heard (though treasured by its 1,647 inhabitants).  We unexpectedly lived with my gracious parents for 8 weeks while Escrow was delayed and delayed and delayed.  We bought our first home.  We planted a Japanese Maple in the yard.  We got two milk goats and a hog.  Our goats ate the Japanese Maple.  We had the great pleasure of being a part of the community pulling together to support a Farmer’s Market. We sorely missed those we left behind in Dallas.  We soaked in the grandeur in the landscape all around us, a salve for the weary soul.  We harvested and preserved pears, apples, plums, potatoes, cabbages.  We weathered the morphic unrest that followed in the wake of the election.  We enjoyed a white Christmas. We watched the Cubs win the World Series for the first time in 108 years.  We have laughed and cried and laughed again.  We have found, yet again, that God is present in the valleys and on the mountains, though more clearly seen and poignantly sought when in the valleys.

While I cannot yet say in full honesty that 2016 was a great year, it was a year where we changed and grew and loved and stayed open – to ourselves and others.  It was a very vulnerable year.  Maybe that’s how years should be.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

              – Leonard Cohen

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Going Home

Posted on by under Family, Life, Nature, Uncategorized

Home is an illusive changing thing.  As a child, “home” needed no definition: it was a reality and a rhythm and an unquestioned state of being.  As a fresh college student returning for a break, home seemed like a shadow, still connected but I stood somehow separate and above – casting a past and projecting a future.  After traveling the world and returning home, the sense of familiar remained but seemed strangely floating and undefinable –  I interpreted this as a change in myself.  I had this unsettled feeling deep within that I no longer belonged in the place where I had become.  I remember a sense of fear at this discovery.

Many years have gone by, and at various times this creeping fear has surprised me by its reappearance in my life.  Sometimes it has been grippingly present as I wake in the morning, only fading slightly by the time my head hits the pillow at night.  My mind has groped for reasons, ways to understand this unwelcome feeling within, attempting to find coping mechanisms for existing in the present.

Recently have I realized that a longing for “home” has little to do with place and everything to do with self.   There is, within humanity, a desire to have a mummified self held safe and sound in a known location.  As long as we have that, we can travel the world, fall in love, change social groups, bring new humans in the world, change and be changed in nearly every way.  Then at Christmastime, when that bite of great-grandma’s pie hits your tongue *BAM* mummified self sighs with relief.  Home nostalgia floods the senses.  All is right in the world.

I’m in my thirties and after a long absence from the place where I grew up, I am moving my family across the country back to my mountains.  Only, there is no going back.  Our language reflects this idea that we can “go back” to places, but we can’t.  Nothing is static, not us, not home, not place, not people.  Nothing.  The mummified self doesn’t exist.  For the first time in my life, I am so very thankful for this.  I find it freeing.  I can embrace the change in my self and the change in the place and the change in others that is the reality of the present.

So, Home, I am coming.  But I am not coming back.  I am coming to discover you again, delight in the sense of familiar, resolve the awkwardness we will have when we find where we have both changed, introduce you to the small human selves that run around outside of me, and invite you to discover the love of my life who is inextricable to my self.  This family that I bring is more my home than any place will ever be, but I am so excited to watch you captivate and enchant each other.

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Incline Your Ear

Posted on by under Family, Life, Science

When wisdom enters your heart,
And knowledge is pleasant to your soul,
Discretion will preserve you;
Understanding will keep you.

A beautiful bulging belly, the image of fruitfulness and love, sat before me.  Her eyes were brimming with the life growing inside of her, a life which would soon burst through her heart and shatter it into thousands of droplets filled with colors and light and make a rainbow of her soul.  There were other feelings there, in the pools of her eyes: fear, insecurity, doubt.  My pastor once said, “God gives children to the most inexperienced people.”  Here she was, wondering how the never-ending nine months could have flown by so quickly.  Ready or not (as all parents learn, firmly “not”), this baby is coming and coming soon.

She was my patient and her question seemed simple, though her voice was anxious and taught,  “what do you keep in your home medicine cabinet?  I want to make sure I’m prepared.”  Being a leaning-towards-hippy-and-all-things-natural midwife who was also raised in the rurals of Northern California by a saintly woman with solid nutritional, herbal, and medicinal values, I should have had a ready-answer.  But, being a real life mother, there was this rush of panic, self-consciousness, and insecurity.  Startled by this unforeseen halter, I noted that our appointment was running long and I’d be delighted to answer her question the following week.

This is not about what’s in my medicine cabinet.  It’s about stepping into the wardrobe behind the medicine cabinet and choosing who to trust in a wide and unfamiliar world where you are the monarch and responsible for taking care of lives.  You discover during pregnancy that everyone feels the freedom to tell you what you just have to know and just have to do and just have to…  And then you wade (or drown) into parenthood and there are even more voices telling you what you should do or think.  How and who do you believe? How do you choose who to trust?  What do they know, anyhow?  Pretty soon you’re requiring everyone’s credentials, background, and philosophical position on modern medicine before you lend them an ear. And THEN you realize that you’re not one bit closer to making a decision and really everyone is out to confuse you and how, oh how, can there be so many opinions about every tiny piece of parenting? (If you don’t believe me, just speak the word “immunizations” publicly and experience the torrent of opinions that follow).

If you cry out for discernment,
And lift up your voice for understanding,
The Lord gives wisdom;
He stores up sound wisdom for the upright

In my profession, there are things that a pregnant/laboring/breastfeeding woman should do (eat well, drink plenty of water, stay active…) and shouldn’t do (smoke, drink diet soda, run a marathon after 36 weeks…).  Everyone agrees, these things are sound and smart and will always be true.  Science is not what we as moderns tend to think it is – it is not static or infallible or universal.  Wisdom, however, is.  We need both, but not equally.  Wisdom is a gift; science is learned.  Wisdom is unpalpable; science is experimental.  Wisdom is unprovable; science is theory proved to law.  Wisdom emanates from the Almighty who alters scientific “law” upon His whim (or request, sun standing still and all).  Wisdom transcends us yet is deeply personal, piercing to our conscience and ordering our ways.

Yes, incline your ear to wisdom,
And apply your heart to understanding

When someone says something like, “you should try using essential oils when your child has a fever and you’ll never use Tylenol again” or “you really shouldn’t give any vaccinations before your child is one year old, my 5-month old had a terrible reaction when we vaccinated,” this is confusing wisdom for science and making intuition a universal law.  I am, you are, responsible for the little lives given to our stewardship.  For an indefinite amount of time, they are ours.  Mine are not yours and yours are not mine and the woman in Target or at church or at playgroup does not know what is best for your family.  We need community, we crave input, and it’s good to seek advice, but both the decisions and consequences of our family’s health are responsibilities given to us as their parents.

I am not saying to trust your intuition and throw all else to the wind.  I am encouraging you to do your research, talk to others, ask questions of professionals, soak these things in and seek wisdom.  Do not be driven by guilt or insecurity, there is no shame in having (or not having) Benadryl, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, or any other medicine in your cabinet.  Vaccinate or don’t vaccinate based on research or trusting your care provider.  Don’t make these decisions from fear, for in parenting the fear threatens to run deep and cloudy through all things, marring joy and stealing peace. The Good Lord has given you intuition for your family. Incline your ear and learn to trust.  Trust God’s provision, His plan, His love for your children. Surrender them to Him and you will find freedom from fear.

He is a shield to those who walk uprightly;
He guards the paths of justice,
And preserves the way of His saints. 

Proverbs 2

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We’re All Terminal

Posted on by under Family, Life, Literary/Poetry, Musings, Nature

I wake.  I write, I write it all, I write it now because now is all I have.  The moment to come may bring a waking child, a mosquito vibrating around my ear, or a jack-hammer trying to break through the concrete and my reverie.  But now, now is silent.  Now is mine.  In the recent past (recent is, of course, relative to your sense of time; for here I will say recent is few years), I have not written for fear.  Fear of being too full to write.  Fear of starting in the wrong place and not having time (when did time become so precious?) to end where I wanted.  These are surface things.

I am not secretive. My thoughts are scarce my own before they’re shared. This is how I live, how I’ve always lived.  Open.  Flowers stay open under the right circumstances: water, sun, earth, chlorophyll and photosynthesis.  They take droplets of light and turn them into life.  During the span of time which I’ve called the recent past, there is a deeper reason I have not written.  It has something to do with nyctinasty, that mysterious lot of flowers that close at night.  The nyctinastics elude scientific explanation.  Some think that the petals grow at different rates of speed, so the top petals are forced to shut.  Maybe. Others say that the flower is protecting its powers of reproduction by closing at night, when the dew is the heaviest.  No one knows why they close, but scientists keep making up answers.  We will never know because flowers are not emotive nor, under most circumstances, talkative.

A butterfly cannot always be beautifully fluttering about.  We grew butterflies in our living room.  They started as specks and grew into caterpillars at an alarming rate.  Then, magic happened.  The greatest change occurred out of sight.  Somehow a speck grabbed a blanket, wrapped it close around itself with hot cocoa and came out a butterfly, fully equipped with the latest flying paraphernalia.  Magic.  I, too, closed up for the night.  Special blanket in tow, I plopped a marshmallow into my cocoa and cocooned myself for an indefinite length of minutes.  Or years.  Grace abounded. I’ve changed and been changed. Marriage changed me, changes me.  Motherhood transformed me, transforms me.  My wings may not have hardened yet, but they will soon.  I feel it coming and I will fly.

The first butterfly we released into the great outdoors burst out strongly.  She almost made it to the sidewalk when a mockingbird dove and tackled it, quite brutally, to the ground in front of my two-year-old daughter.  Life is bloody. Death is inevitable.  What would I write if it were my last day?  What would I write to you if it were yours?  We are all terminal.  I write again because now is all I have.

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Ashes, Ashes

Posted on by under Family

The poignancy of Ash Wednesday struck with quite a blow this year. I had on one side my nearly 2-year-old girl and on the other my new baby boy. The rhythm of the liturgy Proceeded as usual, my sweet little girl chiming in with her hearty “amens” either just before or after the beat. “Come, all is made ready” rang the familiar call and papa with daughter and I with my freshly-born son stood to make the journey to the High Place. We supped with God and then the brutal truth blazed before us: ashes would today be our crown. We, as Adam, would be banished from the Garden. The striking part this year was in my arms. My son, a month old in this world, who has as far as I know, committed no volitional sin – he too bore a black cross, the symbol of his grave.

“From dust you are and to dust you shall return”. How can this be? This cherubic boy’s face marred with the mark of a sin-stained soul? I looked to my left, finding it quite easy to believe such guilt lay in my spirited and stubborn girl, easier still to know many sin-lived years in papa & I, but more difficult to see it in this helpless child asleep in my arms. Yes, even he needs ashes. His soul needs reminding of sinful mortality. He is as needful of a Savior as his papa, mama , and sister. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, the Font of my son’s redemption. Thankful that my son has been cleansed by Christ, I descend the Hill with a new light shining to the depth of depravity.

Shadowlands

Posted on by under Family

I have ventured out. I have traveled a very far distance of five floors. It seems a very far distance, at least, since my precious little girl is bound to room #558. But I’ve gone for a walk, taken deep breaths of outside air for the first time in five days, and now I sit alone in the “Family Resource Center”, here looking for some words. Thoughts bubble, not flowing together as they should, but bubbling as though from an underground spring, or maybe like a fountain shooting out of the earth not knowing where its droplets will land or if the earth will be receptive to its dew. It doesn’t care, and spouts away. That’s me. My girl is very sick. A week ago she was laughing and running and talking, always talking. In the course of hours she went to a shadowland all of her own, one I could not go with her to nor bring her back from. Flashbacks to a time and place of my past when life was understood to end in death at any age. The way I saw her sternum suck to her spine with each breath – this was a familiar sight when I was in a different land – but not here, not my little girl, how could she be struggling to breathe in the same way they had? Most of those babies from the past had skin as dark as the dirt I buried them in, not the blue eyes and blonde hair of the precious child in front of me. I have reached a new level of understanding, I have ascended the hill of the Lord by descending through the depths of despair. On this journey, I have learnt one thing: Sophia is not mine, nor would I wish her to be. No, she is covered by One so much greater than me, she rests protected in His hands and covered with His feathers. Our Lord has given angels gaurd over her to keep her in all her ways: this I could not pretend or imagine to do. I sit at her bedside, He dwells within her and surrounds her. I grasp her hand, He securely holds her soul. I stroke her face, His countenance rests upon her and grants her peace. She is His, as I am, and I am the steward whose heart floods over and drowns with love – the love that He has given me to have for her. I rest under the Shadow of the Almighty.

Love

Posted on by under Family

I’ve been gone a while, maybe someone noticed, maybe not. You can never tell in this technological world we find ourselves in. The photo on the last post I had makes me smile. It feels like yesterday and at the same time a decade ago. I never have been very good at judging the passage of time. However, I do know what has filled the void of the past two and a half years: LOVE, baby! Oh, yes. Lots and lots of love. See:

               And see some more:

That’s a lot of love there, folks.

Fun in the snow…

Posted on by under Family

Photos by the great Chris Linebarger:

Getting out some of my violent tendencies:

My dearling fiancé after he did some tree-hugging:

What a mystery it is when two people are knit together through the difficulties and the joys. Love has become a secret that I want to share with everyone and at the same time know that it is intimate enough that only Jason will understand our love, for each love is different. We have become witnesses to the others’ heart and soul. I am left simply thankful. The 55 days left til we get married are invaluable to us and I look forward to the click of the invisible knitting needles poking, bobbing, looping, and binding these two threads together.