The Mess

"A two year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it."  -Jerry Seinfeld

This is Ian's last month being a two year old.  The last weeks.  I know that it will not change him overnight but the changes will happen as quietly as the sun slips into the horizon each evening.  The phrases he picks, the way he talks to me.  He says each word as if a mini hurricane is propelling the syllables out one by one.  He is left breathless after a story told.  When he is done, eyebrows up, he is watching to see if I understand.  Watching to see if my eyebrows will go up too, repeating the story.  

When we have had a full day, after friends and family have shared life with us, the sun sinks and Ian clings near to me.  He holds his face close to mine and says, "mommy don't share Ian now."  I love that.  I love that there are moments that I don't have to share him.  No school bus to catch, or friends that are more exciting.  But the days are short.  I don't want to waste the days cleaning and prepping for the smooth running moments and miss the messy ones.  The messy ones where the kitchen is undone from making muffins and the floor is smudged with mud. Three sets of feet now run barefoot in the backyard.  Screeching  when they find a frog or toad.  Bringing it close to me as if it was a bundle of daffodils.  The mud smeared onto his cheeks and small hands proof that catching the frog was no easy feat.  And the mess mingles in with the joy, the wearing out and the giving.

The truth is, what overwhelms me about life is also the vehicle in which the most joy flows.  The mess of it.  I am constantly putting back into order what has been scattered in a day.  It would be easy to demand order.  It would be easy to keep shoes tied tight, the hose off, and frogs in the woods.  The house would look much better.  I would look less weary by seven o'clock.  But the joy would trickle out instead of gush. The bone tired exhaustion of some days are also the same days saturated in joy. The mess and joy cannot be separated in life.  And the magazine pictures that show it all clean and pristine, also show frozen smiles for a camera crew.  So, I will try to remember tomorrow, as I scrub the mud from the floor and find the two year old tracker of the mud at the sink, that these moments are sweet.  That very soon the days of scrubbing will turn into days of remembering.  

I hope you get to smile at a mess today.  That the mess will be a reminder of blessing.  And that we can all stop looking for the blender top for a moment.

"Every good gift and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."  James 1:17

Gratitude

"Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into tranquil joy."      -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are cleaning out the basement, closets, and corners of a house well lived in.  And the best find so far has been the old bent box of dusty photo albums.  Jeff hauled it up from a corner of the basement, placed there for just a moment and then forgotten.  I wiped down the covers, the dust thick.  And as I flipped through them time stopped.  Faces, eyes squinting at the sun.  My sister, brother, and I with the California hills behind us.  The years skip forward and high school is relived in moments, fingers pausing at the friends I have lost touch with. I flip another.  My first dorm room.  Tapestry hung above the bed and a look of anticipation and fear.  And then the countless ones of friendships made, trips taken, experiences that welded hearts together.  The first ones of Jeff and I dating, the ones of us broken, and then the wedding day.  They flood through my heart and mind as I remember what I don't ever think about much anymore.  That I didn't just end up in Culpeper, VA married with three boys.  And Jeff didn't just come up with a crazy idea to move us all to Basque, Spain.  Each picture held a clue to how we got here to this place.  And to see it unravel dusty page after dusty page steadily filled me with gratitude. 

 Gratitude for parents that loved and spoke into my heart.  For an older sister and brother who shaped me.  Friends who helped me understand what it is to give and receive.  For a man that loves me, the good, the bad, the tiring.  And the three boys smiling at me in each photo.  Teaching me what life is about.  And I am so glad it is not all about me. I wouldn't trade a single snapshot for a better composition.  For better lighting or faces.  They tell a story I am so grateful I get to be a part of.  That feels a lot better than being afraid of what is left to written.  Gratitude rests in the remembering.  And to remember with a heart and mind that sees  clearly.  That each moment, day, and year had a purpose.  Some refining and stretching, most just living through the small joys given.  And none wasted.  The perspective of seeing snippets of life lived so far, how much has been given.  How much has been GIVEN.  It is hard not to thank the Giver.

I hope you get to pull out an old picture album this week.  To go through the slick pages of memories, years lived.  And to see how God was weaving His love story throughout.  That each face in each picture was a part of something so much bigger than you.  That your heart will grow heavy with thanks by the time you flip the last page and reach the pages to be filled.

"What shall I return to the 

LORD 

for all his goodness to me."

Psalm 116:12

Home

The first summer in our home, 2003.

"Where we love is 

home, 

Home that feet may leave 
but not our hearts." 

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

When Jeff first pulled up to the house we would call home I asked him to take me to the backyard. Surely I could handle any condition the house was in if it had a good backyard.  Luke, five months old, squirmed in my arms.  The back yard had old dog pens, half formed fences, rusted and sagging.  I counted four old clothes line poles, the wire connecting the poles long gone.  And then, I hesitantly scanned the ground.  Mounds of loose trash formed into reckless piles.  An old engine and sink laid near the edge of the tree line.  I looked further and saw old diapers, ketchup packets, broken glass, and wires tangled in the knee high weeds.  Jeff saw me, eyes fixed on a large mint green trailer, and explained how some old cars had already been towed out for us.  That the group of people had been living for awhile in this house without water or electricity.  The house went through foreclosure and then was emptied of the people, just not their trash.  I looked over at the diapers and my stomach turned trying to imagine a small child in this filth.  There were deep grooves in the earth around the house where Shirley, our neighbor, told us that the previous tenants would get drunk and drive their car around the yard.  They would honk and knock on her door late into the night.  She was just starting to adjust to living alone at that point.  Just starting to pray for new neighbors.  We had two months to turn the house into a home.  Two months of taking countless truck loads of trash, gutting the inside filth and painting a new beginning.

 If I stood in the center of the backyard and just looked up at the changing leaves my stomach would stop turning and I would breath deep the possibilities of Jeff's vision for what would become. 

And we did it.  Well, mostly Jeff did it.  Long nights and full weekends.  Help from friends and family.  The house became a home in mid December, 2003.

The last summer in our home, 2013.

On an cool April night in 2008 we had to leave our home without shoes and carrying out the boys.  An electrical attic fire left us in the driveway, placing sleeping boys in the van as we called 911.  Shirley rushed over pressing a fifty dollar bill in my hand and with prayers on her lips.  Five fire engines came with lights and sirens as the roof burned.  We lost the roof, that was it, the rest was just smoke and water damage.  Luke and Levi were five and three. We lived six months in a rental.  A big house in a big neighborhood. Everything we had was not ours.  Rented in a package that all matched.  Toys, drawings, books, and furniture; all thrown out, cleaned, or stored until we could move back home.  Young life guys helped with the demolition.  Me shouting from the back yard to be careful as they yielded sledge hammers and created black dust.  Jeff and his brother's construction crew rebuilt and added an upstairs in those summer months.  The boys would catch frogs and sing Bob the builder as they watched them work.  We came home in October to a different house. The memories and backyard stayed the same.

The backyard that raised my boys.

We still lay down in the backyard and look up at the green leaves against the blue and talk about how God protected and provided for us through the fire.  Even before the fire.  This home has become a symbol of His provision in so many ways.  When Jeff and I moved in this home half finished we did not know we would stay all these years.  We didn't know it was exactly 3/4 a mile from the school our boys would grow, laugh, and learn in.  We didn't know the U-shaped drive would be perfect for all those hesitant new high school drivers that would pull in for visits.  We didn't know our back yard would become a sanctuary from the exhausting pace of a life poured out.  Where bare feet would run in wet grass soaking up every ounce of sun in a day.  And we didn't know the friend in Shirley yet, or the bigger house we would get two years before Ian was born.  Luke still proclaims that the fire happened because God knew our family was about to grow.  The memories made outside and in.  And yet, it all happened.  I cannot tell you how many times in this last year that I have thought of these things and it has encouraged me.  To leave what we love and know and move on to something completely new and unknown.  To rest in knowing that He took care of it all back then.  When we bought the wreckage and slowly saw it become a home.  I look back and see our God providing and protecting time and time again.  And I know that same God will go before us and with us to Basque.  In a small apartment without a yard, through wreckage or fire, I can trust Him.  These five sets of  feet are about to leave our first home, with that knowledge deep in our hearts.

But as it is written,
"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those 
who love him."
1 Corinthians 2:9

Belly Laughing

      

"One Joy shatters a hundred griefs." -Chinese proverb 

       

We just got back from five days in Colorado Springs, CO.  Cross Cultural Orientation 2013.  From morning until late afternoon we sat and discussed almost every topic in the closed white binders on our tables.  Taking notes and sharing our hopes and fears. Carefully going through how to file taxes overseas, passports, visas, culture shock, re-entry, and a host of other topics.  The black letters neatly typed explaining each topic in detail as six YL International staff gently explained the differences and personal stories surrounding them.  Seventeen sets of eyes reading and scanning the room and speakers.  Seventeen of us trying to figure out what the next year will look like in Basque Country, Scotland, Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond.  As the days leaned into evenings we all began to realize our next year will not be neat and tidy like the carefully typed binder.  It will be filled in with messy scribbles, side notes and smears of ink. The evidence of the steps of faith that stretch out and often fail to reach.  The common theme being that it will be hard.  It will be really hard at times.  But that it will be really good too.  Rarely is there much in life that is wonderful without the cost of pain involved.  And Jesus was very clear that if we are to live a life that seeks Him we will not always feel good, not always feel comfortable.  That in order to live for Him we must die to our self, our wants, our agenda, sometimes even our dreams.  His ways are so much better anyway, but there is a lot of me that can get in the way. 

After dinner each evening we would all pile into a suite at the Hotel. We would share about the country we were heading to, play games, and eat chocolate. Late into the night when I crept back into our room I would look at my cheeks, red from laughing so hard. I would suck in my stomach and feel the pinch from the belly laughing ease for a moment. I would wash off the smudged mascara and climb into bed feeling very much alive and not nearly as afraid. Staring in the dark I began to think about how we all get pretty good at walking through pain. We don't really have a choice.  We all pass the lessons of heart ache and loss. We might stumble along, but we get through them. And this year has been wrapped up in a lot of those things. But the laughter in life is a choice to be made.  That night I could not remember the last time I laughed until sides ached and face puffed up. I had laughed. I had laughed at Levi's antics and the way Ian formed new phrases. I chuckled at Jeff's candid remarks and grinned with pride when Luke expressed his thoughts before bed. But I had not belly laughed in a long, long time.

 Joy as our strength. Growing up mom always closed her prayers with that simple request, and she still lives it.  I know how I will close my prayers this year. That God will allow us to belly laugh as much as we struggle. That Luke, Levi, and Ian will learn to laugh a messy, loud laugh as they walk out the difficult things with us. It is hard to be afraid when your laughing. And I am pretty sure hearts of friends and family knit together tighter when we are willing to laugh as we stretch forward in life. I am so grateful for the hearts I got to see in Colorado, for the friends made, the lessons received, and especially the belly laughs.

"She is clothed with strength and dignity;

she can laugh at the days to come."

Proverbs 31:25

Shirley

"He will cover you with His feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;  

His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."

 Psalm 91:4 NIV

 "When you are covered by His wings, 

it can get pretty dark."  

-Corrie Ten Boom

I ate our neighbor, Shirley's cookies before I ever met her.  2003 with Luke only 10 months old and a ramshackle house we would call home.  It was a mess inside and out but we could afford it and Jeff could repair it.  It took months and one time while we were walking through and dreaming of the home it would be she left a carefully wrapped plate of cookies on the roof of my car with a note that said, "I am so happy to have new neighbors, welcome home!  Love, Shirley"  

That seems so long ago now.  The first tentative steps in a relationship.  Decades separating us.  Her lawn filled with flowers and lush green grass.  Always quiet without a fallen leaf  in the fall and not a blade of grass taller than a toe in the summer.  I would walk over if I saw her out, Luke on my hip and then later him tottering forward through the bare spots in our yard, leaves clinging to his pants he went.  Shirley would always pause from her work to talk about children, flowers, and God.  

Two years passed with her laughing at Luke running through the sprinkler and chasing the cat.  And then Levi came.  Colic and red faced crying as I tried to look less flustered than I felt.  That is when we began to really talk.  She would tell me to enjoy the moments of flustered days.  The child holding my leg and the baby crying in my arms.  I remember so clearly her saying one day I would wish for noise and need and mess.  That one day it would be too quiet and the lawn would look too nice and tidy.

Three years passed and the boys would ask to go see Ms. Shirley now.  We built snowmen in her yard,  sledded down her hill, and picked flowers in Spring.  We would sit on her couch and bin of old toys would be brought out and words would flow.  That is the season I learned that the year  before we moved in she had lost her mom, dad, husband, and a son.  All in one year, loss after loss.  After the last funeral she started praying for her fears to subside, her hands to help others, and neighbors in the vacant run down house next door.  And through misty eyes she would exclaim, and He answered my prayers.

Two weeks ago I knocked on a different wooden door with stomach knotted.  Not knowing what to expect after the news from her son that two strokes had taken much of Shirley's strength and that recovery was unknown.  She lay still, eyes open and unable to move even a finger.  I listened close as she tried to form her lips to ask about her flowers and my children.  I spoke with rushed words covering my shock, trying to reconcile the woman before me with the one I last saw.  She asked if the cherry blossoms had bloomed and I answered no.  Thankful for the late March snow and telling her that we would be praying that she would come home in time to see them bloom.  

Last night I creaked open the wooden door again, my throat tight.  The florescent light streaming in across her face from the hallway.  I held a jar of cherry blossoms cut an hour earlier.  I couldn't tell her it had blossomed without her home.  Her eyes first focused on my face and then the jar of pale pink blossoms she cried.  Mouth twisted and bent tears streamed down her face.  We spoke slowly in the darkness of the room.  I asked if she was scared.  Her answer silenced me.  "I was really really scared at first.  I don't want to be here, I want to be home.  But I am trusting Him now.  I am in His hands.  And if my life is in His hands I want what He wants. I want what He wills."  She said this with tears still streaming down her face and longing to be whole.  And I cried with her and prayed with her.  The drive home asking God to have that same heart in me.  One that accepts not just the easy from His hands but the hard.  The one that knows He is a good father who protects even when we still feel pain.  

Today as the sun set and the boys yelled wild I ran from my backyard to hers and took picture to post on her walls.  I laid under the trees and stood on the hill high above them and wondered if she planted them with her husband before I was born.  Wondered what she thought of as she sat Spring after Spring under their branches.  Wondered if they reminded her of life each season instead of loved ones taken. And prayed that God would be gentle and that she would feel His love each moment. Realizing slowly that as I sat there that she is more certain now of God's hand in her life now than any other season.  And that even in this darkness His light will shine through her and produce something beautiful.  

Freedom and challenge

"This is what the past is for!  Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."

-Corrie Ten Boon, The Hiding Place

Three weeks have passed so quickly.  Twenty one days.  Countless loads of laundry, meals made, dishes washed.  Shoes and coats gathered again and again as the weather warmed and cooled.  Conversation and prayer over finances, ministry, loved ones, and Basque Country.  Time lines changing to fit a future we are so sure of and yet still feel so far from.

Three weeks ago, we paused fundraising efforts for a time of prayer.  To hear from Him about direction and timelines and ready to lay it all down if asked.  And then, in the middle of not fundraising, a very very large matching pledge was given, and the direction was renewed and clarified.  We are currently at 50% raised to be released to start up Young Life in Basque Country, Spain.  A whole 20% closer than where we were three weeks ago.  We had hoped and planned to transition this summer. Packing up, renting our house, and selling the rest of our belongings just in time to start the boys fresh this Fall to begin their first year of school in Basque.  

We are now readjusting to leave by January, 2014.  Six months difference.  Middle of the year moving and schooling options varying.  It is not what we would have chosen but it is good.  It is good because when we leave is one of the only things completely out of our hands.  There is so much we can choose, change, and hurry through.  Leaving is not one of them.  So to have it change is incredibly challenging and freeing at the same time.  Challenging, because we are readjusting expectations, time lines, and schooling.  Freeing because it is a beautiful reminder that we are not calling the shots.  And we are not orchestrating this on our own.

We are half way there.  We want to live out the rest of the 50% well.  With joy and expectation.  Enjoying every moment of family, friendship, and ministry here and now.  And trusting that ultimately it is God who sets the time lines and not us.

Thank you for walking this out with us.  In prayer and encouragement.  We can't wait to share the next steps with you...

Looking up

"He who can no longer pause to WONDER

 and stand rapt in 

AWE, 

is as good as dead, his eyes are closed."

-Albert Einstein

While visiting dear friends over the summer they introduced us to the murmuration of starlings.  Starlings flock together in the evening to roost.  Before they roost they put on amazing displays in the air, each reacting to the others movements.  The individual movement of each bird colliding with hundreds of others to create  this artwork above.  We stood on the pier heads tilted up to the sky as they gathered and moved across the water.  It was as if they were all tied together in movement, one would tilt up and the whole flock swung up with it. A dip down and the entire mass flowed down almost touching the sea.  And then, all at once they swooped under the bridge for the night.  I had never seen anything like it. Until that evening I could not have even told you what a Starling looked like.

My dad is home.  His last stay in ICU another realization that we are in a new stage with this.  We were  prepped for the sudden taking, instead of the gradual.  And now decisions are to be made.  There are machines that can pump his blood and new therapies, medicines, and doctors.  Decisions that will limits his life but possibly prolong it.  And I listen to his response, face exuding peace.   "I would rather just live each day trusting God, and not spend it hooked up to a machine."  Fullest of life is what he wants. That and to trust God for the number of his days, not man or machine.  For the quality of the days to outweigh the quantity.  And as he said this I began to see that this last month I was trying to figure it all out.  Constantly peering through the fog, stumbling on the path with fear and doubt.  Thinking it was all up to us, all about us.  But there is such a bigger picture than the path in front of us.  I forgot the views to be had when not focused only on my feet and where they were going.  And I look up and see that what He has for us is so much bigger than where the path leads or how long it lasts.  In the looking up I understand why it so was exhausting to only squint nervously forward. So, we will not go from here looking at our feet shuffling forward into the unknown but  looking up to see the God who knit us together with a love and purpose too amazing to fathom.  This knowledge driving out the fear and doubt like nails.  We are standing, heads tilted up and eyes wide open to how big God is.

Driving home the other night I saw a small group of starlings.  No more than twenty, all on the ground, heads down looking for food.  We whistled loud and in that instant they lifted and swooped together in form.  Dipping and gliding past the treeline and into the sunset.
  If you have never seen a murmuration of  Starlings here is a two minute video of one.  It will help you understand the beauty of looking up and knowing we are a small part of the bigger whole:
Murmuration Video  

Isn't that amazing?  Imagine paddling, eyes fixed forward, pushing through the water with  land in sight and then glancing up to see that!  Praying that you will stop squinting ahead to figure out what is next and look up to the sky for a moment.  Look up to the One who gave you that moment and thank Him.  That you will quit bracing for storms ahead and look instead to the One who commands the wind and sea.  And that your heart will not be seized with fear but instead overflow with gratitude for the life given, 

and the life lived in Him.

"You hem me in - behind and before; 

you have laid your hand upon me.  

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, 

too lofty for me to attain."

Psalm 139:5&6