Sacrificial Love 13 Years In

I left my house between the conclusion of homework and the beginning of bedtimes tonight.  A young woman from my church invited me to speak to a group of RAs at our local Christian college about what I was reading in the Bible lately.  I accepted the invitation because I love to talk and especially I love to talk about the Bible.  So I sat down with these women and we read through Romans 12, a chapter chock full of relationship advice and descriptions of sacrificial love.

"...in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice..."

I didn't mention that today is my 13th wedding anniversary.

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

As I left the house, I wondered, Is it hypocritical to ask your husband to put the kids to bed on his own on your anniversary so you can discuss sacrifice to a group of college students?  The answer that came back?  Probably.

"Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought..."

Probably I should have stayed home.  Probably I should have been excited about the passing of another year of marriage.  Probably I should have been having an honest conversation with my husband instead of a group of (mostly) strangers.

"...but rather think of yourself with sober judgment."

I started off talking about selfishness.  We are all born self-focused, because we can't even meet our own needs, much less think of or give to another.  We spend our childhoods completely obsessed with ourselves, culminating in the most self-centered developmental stage:  adolescence.  I can remember as a teenager feeling certain that EVERYONE was looking at me, that everyone could see whatever perceived minor flaw I was focused on that day.  What a shock to get older and realize that we could have done whatever we wanted in those days, because NO ONE was paying attention to anyone else. We were all consumed with our own inner drama.

"We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us."

I can also distinctly remember times when I was in college and felt so glad that I didn't have kids, that I was single and only responsible to myself.  I felt like I got a bonus selfish period, a few years after school but before marriage and family life forced me to flush out all that self-centeredness.  My time, my money, my body, and my possessions were simply MINE.  I did not share.  I did not take other people into consideration.  I look back fondly on those days.

"If it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach."

Because what came next--sharing my life and my home with my husband--it has been much harder.  It has required me to think of someone else.  I had to make room for another person in all those areas that used to be exclusively mine.  And that does not come naturally to me.  If we're being honest, it doesn't come naturally to any of us.

"Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil, cling to what is good."

We all know that adults should be responsible, considerate, giving, gracious, SACRIFICIAL.  Adults should be able to take care of each other and any children they bring into the world, as well as keeping plants and animals alive and performing light household repairs.  But look around.  Look in the mirror.  It doesn't just happen.  We don't wake up on our 18th or 22nd or 35th or 58th birthdays and suddenly know how to put other people's needs ahead of our own.  I spent the last week in Family Court and I'm ready to give up on humanity.

"Be devoted to one another in love.  Honor one another above yourselves."

In fact, at this moment, I believe Paul's words to the Roman church more than ever.  It is God working through us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that transforms our hearts and enables us to love each other.  It's nothing we can do on our own.  And we still manage to get in our own way.

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."

The women in my Bible study laughed when I said that pregnancy was one of the most sacrificial acts I performed.  But I was being serious.  My body was overtaken by another creature, someone I didn't even know yet who ate all my food and stretched out my stomach and made all the parts of my body ache in a symphony of discomfort.  It was the perfect preparation for motherhood.  Parenting is total sacrifice.  It is decades of watching another Elmo video and re-reading Harold and the Purple Crayon and going sledding when everyone knows snow is best enjoyed from INSIDE the house.  It is sleepless nights and worrisome doctor's appointments and combing through books to find a solution.  It is years without new clothes and too long between visits to your hairstylist so that your kids can play t-ball and go to the pool, not to mention that giant money suck known as Back to School shopping.

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn."

Marriage feels a little different.  Some days it is hard to muster sympathy for your sick spouse or stop yourself from rolling your eyes at their complaints.  Sometimes the limitless patience you can give to your kindergartner as he sounds out sight words is sorely lacking for a husband who has misplaced his wallet.  Again.  Maybe it's because the power dynamic is different.  Husbands and wives are on essentially similar footing, while parents and children aren't.  You sacrifice completely for the kids because you know they need it, know they won't be able to give you anything for years, if ever.  In my experience, marriage has its ups and downs, with one person bearing the brunt for a period until things level off, and then the other will take up the load for a while.

"Live in harmony with one another...as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."

It feels like I've been the one carrying the weight for a while now.

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."

What I shared with the college students tonight is that while I would prefer to say, "I've lived a lovely, charming life that's been happy all the time, and now I'm just like Jesus!" I'm learning that God has a very different life planned for His followers.  It's in the hardships and struggles that we are transformed, it's only by enduring pain and loss and difficulty that we can grow as people.  Sacrificial love does not come as a result of a carefree life, it comes on the tail end of our most challenging seasons.  Yet in the midst of a difficult season, I don't feel like celebrating.  I don't feel warm and gooey and sentimental, I feel hard and tired and cynical.

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

These are hard words to read, harder still to live out, especially when there are days when I feel like giving up.  If faith is having confidence of what we hope for and being certain of what we do not see, then faith is the only thing I have in those moments.  Faith in light up ahead.  Faith in unloading the weight, in trading off with my partner.  Faith that something good and worthy will come out of this time of struggle.  Faith that all the time, God is good.

After 13 years, all I have is faith in us.

Listen to Your Heart {it happened on a sunday} Day 10

When I was 17, I got a part time job at the concession stand of a local movie theater.  It was amazing.  The perks were three-fold:  free movie tickets for me and a friend whenever, unlimited Cherry Coke during my shifts (something that was definitely treated like a banned substance at home), and a few of my friends also worked there, so bonus time to hang out and have fun together.  To this day, I love to go to the movies, sit back with a giant pop and buttery popcorn and watch the magic unfold on screen.

There was another perk I soon discovered at this job, and his name is Chris.  I remember the first time I saw him, another concession employee in a plastic purple apron squirting butter into a tub of popcorn.  I liked the way he looked.  I spent some time talking with him during slow periods, and I liked the way he looked at the world.  I spent more time joking around with him, and I liked the way he laughed.  Pretty soon, I had a full-blown crush.

Here's some good news:  this story has a happy ending.  I wonder how I would think of it today if it had gone differently.  Anyway, over the course of a year of being friends, flirting, and taking our breaks together to go to Wendy's or Quizno's for dinner, we finally went out on a date.  It was really fun.  In fact, I don't think either of us wanted it to end, because after we ate dinner, we drove around so we could talk longer, eventually stopping at an ice cream stand, and later, grabbing a little table at Starbucks.

We had to say good night just before midnight, because my family was leaving for vacation.  In fact, once we got back from the beach, I had only a week to pack and prepare to leave for college.  So, although I liked him and had fun with him, I didn't see how we could become anything other than what we already were.  Flash forward a month, and I was about an hour away at school, Chris was finishing high school and still working at the movie theater with my best friend, who didn't leave for college for another week.  Through her, I was able to communicate when I would be home next, and find out if he wanted to get together while I was back.  He quickly agreed, and we met at Friendly's on a Saturday night.

It was just like I remembered time spent with him.  We laughed a lot, we spent a ridiculous amount of  time standing in the parking lot because neither of us wanted the night to end.  And part of me was hoping that while we were out there in the semi-dark, that maybe he would kiss me.  But after 3 hours (not an exaggeration), I finally had to go home.  Unkissed.

On Sunday, I returned to my dorm, ended up in a room full of people bemoaning the sort-of-date-without-a-goodnight-kiss, and had a detailed breakdown of the previous evening and the possibility that this guy was just not into me.  Before I went to bed that night, I checked the computer that I shared with three other people (because that's how we rolled in 2000) and saw a message from Chris, which basically said that he was sorry he didn't kiss me, he got nervous and chickened out, but he wanted to see me again soon, and maybe we should start calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend.  I sent a message back (YES, duh!) and began my first serious relationship.

It took me way too long to realize that the feelings I had were love; probably not until a year into dating him did I feel that strong emotion.  Just to balance each other out, he felt it a little too quickly and said "I love you" three weeks after we agreed to start dating.  It was this relationship that transformed me the most over the coming years, as my heart finally joined the rest of my body in making decisions and planning for the future.  Things that I had, until very recently, sworn off (marriage, parenthood, suburban domesticity) were suddenly back on the menu, and the detour that was started by my depression further drifted from my original plan for my life.

Outside In

Every other Saturday night, our house fills with delicious smells.  My husband and I take turns making yummy breakfast foods, because every other Sunday morning, we teach the middle school students at our church.  A wise friend once told me something that has proved to be true: you have to love people from the outside in.

When we show up with food, our students will sit with us and allow us to nourish their minds because we are first nourishing their bodies.  Over time, after being consistent with food and honest answers and showing that we care, they will finally allow us into the depths, where their spirits reside.  If we want to reach their souls, we have to start by feeding their endlessly hungry bodies.

It makes sense if you think about it, because we all know how poorly people learn when they are starving, or afraid, or worried about their personal safety.  I learned Maslow's hierarchy years ago in a college sociology class, and yet I can be so intent on what is below the surface of the people I love that I completely ignore their more pressing physical needs.

It shouldn't be complicated, and yet it is.  Sometimes it is tunnel vision, sometimes it is our own ignorance.  I was thinking about my son who is adopted, and the little girl that we fostered a few years ago, about how needy they were when they came to us.  And we wanted to soothe their bodies and fill their bellies and reassure them that they were precious and loved and safe, but we were ignoring the first layer.

Do you know what is most important to a child?  More than food, more than physical safety, more than warm blankets on a clean bed?  His mom.  Psychologist Harry Harlow performed experiments on rhesus monkeys in the 1950s that demonstrated how crucial a mother is to her baby, and the conversations I have with my non-biological children confirms it.  Which means that while we mend the physical and emotional wounds of children who have been neglected and abused, we must also demonstrate love for the adults who allowed it in the first place.  No easy task.

I had a moment of panic the other day when my son reached for a bag of cookies and said, "I've never tried this before.  Let me have some!"  Because I can easily imagine his birth parents saying or thinking something similar when they were introduced to the addictive drugs that derailed their lives. How much are we, as adoptive parents, able to re-write biology?  Is there something ticking inside him that will go off in adolescence and take him down their same path?  Or was it childhood hyperbole that I was reading way too much into?

I don't want my son to repeat his mom's mistakes, and the best way I can think to help him is to let him know her, to be honest about why he lives with us and what unique challenges he'll face as he grows up.  The worst thing I could possibly do is talk about her with disrespect, calling her names or criticizing her choices.  If I can step back and allow him to see her as she is, without casting my own thoughts or feelings onto their relationship, then I trust that he'll understand what is true better.  He won't grow up with some idealized version of her (or me, for that matter), because he will know where he came from.

Coffee Day

Dear Coffee:

I held you in my hand as I browsed Facebook this morning, and I discovered that it was your special day!  People were toasting you and roasting you and telling you how wonderful you are, and I had to join in.  Of course, you know how much you mean to me, not just today, but every day of the year.  A love like ours doesn't need to be validated by social media, but it is so magical that it has inspired me to climb to the top of my online platform and declare to all my readers that I am in love with you.

Remember when we first met?  I was only 8 years old, and I breathed in your unique aroma.  I drank of your brown goodness (2 sugars and 3 creams) and I knew I'd found something special.  I tried to get as much of you as I could, at restaurants and on the road, in the kitchens of my relatives and even at home.  You were everywhere, in one form or another.  When I look back on my life, the stressful moments and the celebrations, the holidays and birthdays, the hotel lobbies and airplane galleys, you were there for me.

Our relationship changed, naturally, as I grew up.  These days, I enjoy you with a little flavored cream, often in a to-go mug as I run my kids to school in the mornings.  Occasionally, we even meet up at a local shop.  I still enjoy the times we can sit outside together, fresh air and warm coffee.  You have perked me up after sleepless nights, given me the energy to get through another day of diapers, laundry, pbjs, repeat.  You have kept me warm on the cold days, when rain has soaked me through as I struggled to get three kids in their car seats.  You are who I want after an afternoon snowball fight.

Coffee, you are universal.  You go with everything.  You wash down a delicious pastry as easily as a ham sandwich.  You pair with dessert and breakfast, or as a stand alone.  You taste delicious dressed down in black or dolled up with whipped cream and caramel.  You let me choose cold or hot, and you never ask anything from me.

We both know I've dabbled in some other beverages.  You forgave me for the Butterbeer I drank over spring break, accepting that what happens in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter STAYS in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  You co-exist with water and Coke and wine, because you know that you'll always be my first love, that none of them compare to you.  And you'll be there for me to the end.  I've seen you in the hospitals and nursing homes, and we know about the senior discount.

Happy Coffee Day friend.  Thank you for all that you give me, the caffeine and sugar and warmth.  Here's to many more years of you and me!

On Racial Tension

Well, here it goes.  This is my attempt to write about something that has become a very big issue in our country right now, something that I haven't felt able or qualified to write about before (and let's face it, that hasn't changed) for a few reasons.  One is that I'm white.  I've followed the news a little and every time I see an article about white privilege, I find myself nodding along in agreement.  Yep, that's me, someone who has lived her whole life privileged enough not to have to think about race.  I would rather listen to others share their experiences than try to jump on my platform and tell anyone what is going on with race in America.  The other is that this topic is so HUGE.  It is not only what is happening now, how different cities and states and sectors of society are handling issues of race, but it encompasses everything that has led to this moment.  We are reaping the consequences of decisions made by our parents, our grandparents, and so on and so on all the way back to our nation's founders, 16th century conquistadors, Greek philosophers, and Hebrew kings.  People hating other people because of superficial differences in appearance, religious practice, eating habits, or dress code is one of the only constants we can point to in history.  No matter where, no matter when, somebody was prejudiced against somebody else because human beings just love to break complicated issues down into us vs. them.

The truth is, I am a spectator.  I am not involved in much that happens beyond my front yard.  I am a commentator at best, enjoying a good discussion about what is going on without really doing anything about it.  So this is not me taking a stand; quite literally, I am reclined in bed as I type this.  All I am really hoping to accomplish is to make public the words that I have spoken in private, and, if I may be so bold, talk about the future.

It began tonight at dinner.  My husband and I were trying to have a conversation over the children's chatter, and the topic focused on the issue of race.  My husband (and I should perhaps point out that he and I see things differently from time to time, and so I will express my own opinion and please don't ever assume that he speaks for me or that I speak for him unless we explicitly make that claim) said that racism seems to be getting worse lately for some reason.  But I disagree.  I think racism is honestly making a slow but steady loser's retreat.  However, in the past year or so (because the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner occurred last summer), racial tension has increased dramatically. And I see that as progress.

While I am not qualified to speak about race, I am qualified to speak about history, being a long-time student and lover of it.  There is a word that comes up time and time again as we look back, and that word is revolution.  Now here is the thing I find most interesting about revolutions.  Do you know when they happen?  Do you know what precipitates and provides catalyst for them?  You would think it is when things are at their worst, when people are horribly oppressed and voiceless and they just. can't. take. anymore.  But that isn't when revolution happens.  A revolution comes about when things are getting better.  There is futility in being voiceless and oppressed; only when a light begins to shine at some far off point do people seize their weapons and storm the palaces of their oppressors, demanding equality and justice and demanding blood as recompense.

And so I skim the news and I listen to people talk and I can feel the tension building.  There is anger in America right now, there are mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers demanding that their voices be heard and refusing to accept the status quo.  And I feel a revolution coming.  If you disagree, if you think we have gone backwards and black lives don't matter to the ones holding the guns, ask yourself if anyone would have cared if this happened 30 years ago.  Would anyone have known?  And if you think the police are just doing their jobs and this is all being blown out of proportion and media bias and all that, ask yourself if a cop has ever pointed a gun at you.  In my younger, wilder days (which were quite honestly very tame, but I'm a mom now and speeding seems like a thrill ride for a reckless woman) I got pulled over quite a bit.  I was caught speeding or running a red light, and even though my parents taught me to be polite to the police, I really started to get irritated with them.  And one night (let me emphasize that it was completely dark) I was cruising on home (too fast) and got pulled over a block from my house.  Instead of being appropriately contrite with the officer, I got an attitude.  I said something along the lines of "C'mon man, I live right over there, can you go bother someone else?"  And he let me go with a warning.  So you will excuse me when I say that Darren Wilson overstepped his duties when he shot an unarmed teenager dead in the street right in front of his house because the kid gave him a little lip.  In my story, the guy actually saw me break the law, and the conclusion I am forced to draw is that police treat white and black people differently.

So about that coming revolution.  The tension is building, the protestors have taken to the streets, and I say Don't let up.  Because when was the last time a Congressman sat down to meet with his fellow Congressional leaders and said, "Hey guys, apropos of nothing, I think we should give women the right to vote.  It just occurred to me that it's rather silly that we make all the decisions just because we're men and because we've just always done it that way, and you know our wives and daughters and their friends are actually quite smart and probably capable of making an informed decision at the polls."  Rather, it took more than 70 years of suffragettes marching and petitioning and getting arrested (yay Susan B. Anthony, you go girl!) and storming the institutions of government until they got what they wanted.  Similarly, the Supreme Court justices did not meet in an empty chamber and say, "You know what I just thought of?  We have actual laws in this country that prevent homosexual couples from getting married, and yet we don't have anything that prevents consenting adult heterosexual couples from doing it.  Doesn't that strike you as strange, and even a little illegal?  Why, we should just write a ruling now before anyone realizes what's happened so that if any gay dudes want to put a ring on it, they can?"  Of course they didn't!  Change came about because of focused, intentional efforts to promote gay rights as being something that should be equal to straight rights. (Is that a thing? Is that what we call it?  And btw gays, I watched that How to Survive a Plague documentary and may I just say, you guys and ladies practically wrote the book on civil unrest.  Well done.)

Those in power will always uphold the status quo until it becomes unbearable for them to continue doing so.  And pressure and tension and raging against the machine are the only proven ways to make the powerful pay attention.  So media, keep talking about the cases of excessive use of force by police.  Black people, keep your concerns front and center.  Ordinary citizens, keep an eye (and a camera phone) out for injustice.  All lives should matter, but Justice Department investigations have shown that they don't in actual practice.  I see a revolution coming against the institutionalized racism of our police departments and our courts and I welcome it.  I would like to stress, at this point, the importance of nonviolent protest, the success of both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr (and yes, I realize they both died for what they believed in and Nelson Mandela smuggled weapons into South Africa and lived to a ripe old age but hear me out).  I think we need action and we need tension and we need pressure on those in power, but I don't think we need armed chaos in our streets and in our cities.  I think the message gets diluted when authorities can claim that both sides have blood on their hands, when righteous anger gives way to mindless vengeance.

Let me conclude with a few things that I believe.  I believe in people.  I believe in a better future.  I believe in making the world a better place, in teaching children love rather than hate, peace rather than war.  I believe that light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.  I believe we are better than our prejudices.  I believe our founding fathers gave us the framework to pursue liberty and justice for all, even if they didn't practice it.  I believe that good wins out in the end.

On Having Faith

What I find interesting about marriage and falling in love is how often in saying "I do," by taking the hand of another, we are taking a leap of faith.  We don't know how it will turn out, we don't know what the future holds, but we choose in those moments, those early years, to believe that love is greater than all our faults, that together we are better than we are alone.  And one of the traits of early marriage (the "honeymoon" phase) is just how much we achieve.  We go from two to one.  We bring two of everything:  two lives, two homes, two incomes, two stereos, two routines, two separate and distinct people who somehow must unite into one family.  We are all pretty much in agreement that those years are difficult, that they are fraught with conflict and hurt feelings, changes and turbulence.  But over and over again, couples take that leap of faith and begin a new life together.  Because we believe in it.

Some people say the honeymoon is over when reality sets in.  Gradually, or maybe suddenly, we don't want to have to work so hard at everything.  We are sick of compromise, fed up with sacrificing.  We break our vows in a hundred different ways, but what we are really saying is I don't believe in US anymore.  We've lost our faith.  And isn't it interesting that an affair is often called "being unfaithful"?  We begin to imagine a new life, one that doesn't require so much, one in which the house is always clean and the husband never gets sick and the bank account always has money in it.  We look for someone else to meet our needs, to satisfy our fantasy of love without sacrifice.

We know that fire is destructive.  But fire is also used to strengthen and purify, to mold and shape.  Conflict in marriage is like a fire.  It can bring us together or leave us sifting through the ashes.  There are times when marriages should end.  There are hurts and breaks and wounds that can't heal together.  There are abuses that shouldn't be tolerated, there are boundaries that shouldn't be violated. But there is no relationship that will come easily all the time.  There is no commitment without work. There is no love that doesn't change and transform you.

When the honeymoon is over, that is when Real Love begins.  We keep showing up, day after day.  We put in the long hours and the sleepless nights and get through the droughts and difficulties together.  We begin to realize that this family we are building will never be finished, that as soon as we get into a routine with each other, a baby shows up and disrupts all that.  And again, and again, as we add little people, we scramble to keep our heads above water, never actually getting a chance to sit back and see all that is happening as the moments blend into each other and take up all our time.

I think this is why we celebrate anniversaries.  It's a chance, at least once a year, to look back and see all that we've accomplished, all the growth that has taken place.  It's a day to see all that has come from our act of faith.  And we can keep going with proof; proof that we work, proof that we have become so entwined that we are truly one flesh.

So here we are, entering year 11, moving away from the sleepless nights of babies to the busy evenings of easy readers and math worksheets, no longer the young couple working so hard to create something but still working hard to keep it.  

To the one that I love: I believe in us.  I am thankful for each day that we get through together, for all the ways that we hold each other up.  And I have faith that the best is yet to come.

Behind Every Strong Woman

My friend wrote a blog for my husband yesterday.  Not because she is lusting after him, but because she sees what he does for me and she wanted to affirm him in the way he likes most, words.  Because this past weekend, he sacrificed at home so that I could serve publicly.  He kept the children (not just ours, but a stranger's child too) and cleaned the house and had dinner waiting for me when I got home.  He sat and listened to my stories and kept the teasing to a minimum about this thing that gets me so excited.  What he did enabled me to do what I did.

I wanted to brag about my husband and tell all the single ladies to marry a man who will stay home with the children so you can lead...but then I realized that's not what I did.  We have been married for almost 10 years, and this life that we are currently in was nowhere near our radar when we first began.  I wasn't looking for a man to support me as I stepped up to the microphone.  I had no intention of gathering women and living out my calling.  I didn't have a goal or a launchpad or a dream.

No, ten years ago I chose to marry a man who loved me for who I was (although neither of us really "knew" each other the way we do now, so many years and life-changing experiences later), a man who made me laugh, a man who was committed to making our marriage work and last, no matter what the cost.  And let me tell you, neither of us knew how much it would cost.  We signed a blank check to make our marriage strong and sometimes it shocks me how steep the price can be. (Forgiveness folks.  It is expensive.)

And that is how we jumped.  Not knowing what was coming ahead.  Not partners in some grand plan, just partners in life.  I told him I wanted to live an adventure, and he said, "You got it.  Adventures in a Single Income Household!"  He wasn't kidding.  I did not know what he would stand by my side through, but I knew he would stand by my side.  My husband is a man who says, "I think you can do it.  I think you should do it."

So ladies...if you are already living your dream, if you have already stepped from scared to courageous, then find a man who will live that dream with you.  Find a man who will handle all the "little" things at home so you can do "big" things in public.  But if you are single and like me, unsure what this life holds for you, then find a man like Chris at 22.  Find someone who thinks you are AMAZING...just the way you are.  Find a man who will love you so passionately that your passion becomes his passion.  Find a man who makes you laugh, because the dark days will come, and looks will fade and money will come and go, but laughter will always be there and it will carry you through.  Find a man who never tires of holding your hand.  Find a man who never tires of cheering you on, no matter how much doubt and fear fill you.

And single guys...my guess is that you're single because you're not that guy.  You're not brave enough to leave selfishness in the dust and leap into the great unknown with a hot lady.  You're not secure enough to praise her without first receiving praise.  You're not silly enough to make jokes when the car is broken down and the kid is sick and the 12th rejection letter arrived.  You aren't humble enough to be at home while she moves mountains.  But here is the good news: You can change.  You can grow up.  You can be the kind of man who helps a strong woman stand.  You can be the only one she wants to come home to.  You can be the strong arms that hold her through the storms and you can be the faithful one when all else seems to disappear.

For Chris, who is my shield and my heart, my supporter and my husband.  Thank you for being my partner through all that has passed and all that is yet to come.

Adoption: Love is all you Need

I remember so vividly the scene in 16 & Pregnant when Tyler and Caitlin told their parents they were giving their baby up for adoption.  When they listed all that they couldn't provide for their child.  And Tyler's father's response was "Love is all you need."  And I was dumbfounded when this 17 year old boy responded, "No, you need more than love.  You need diapers, you need food, you need a job!"  How telling that this kid realized that you need more than feelings (or Beatles' lyrics) to raise a child.

Some children are adopted because they come from poverty or young parents, like Tyler and Caitlin.  And some kids are adopted because someone intervened to protect them from abuse or neglect.  Either way, children who leave their birth parents experience a huge loss.  As I have traveled on this road of adoption as a foster mother and adoptive mother, I have learned more and more about the deep wound of separation and loss.

Hearing adopted people talk about their grief makes my heart constrict.  Partly it hurts me to watch people experience this level of trauma.  After all, it was the deep love and compassion in me that led me to fill out all the papers and make a place for this child in my home and in my family.  I don't want him to hurt, to grieve.  My greatest desire for all my children is wholeness.  But part of me is selfish.  Part of the pain I feel centers on my wish to be enough.  I want to be the only mom some days.  I want to fill all the empty places in my child's heart.  The reality is that I can't.  I can't be the cure.  I can't erase the past.  I can only love enough to fill one piece of my son's heart; that love can't fix everything.

As adoptive parents, we have two choices.  We can stick our fingers in our ears and hum "La La La" as loudly as necessary to drown out the voices telling us that adoption is painful, or we can surrender our pride and accept that our children need more than our love to come into adulthood with healthy, intact hearts.

Brother and Sister 2014

For me, this means doing all I can to maintain relationships with members of my son's first family.  We are not necessarily close or in daily contact, but we are able to get together once or twice a year and celebrate this boy that we all love.  It means letting another woman share the title of "Mom", of stepping aside so she can bond with our son.  It means sharing my weaknesses and frustrations and selfishness with my husband behind closed doors, and not making a child responsible for my happiness.  It means learning and researching adoption issues and preparing myself for future conversations.  It means pointing out people who have already walked this road, whether they are friends and neighbors or Buddy the Elf.  It means parenting without a map.  It means delving into the Beatles' catalog and choosing to quote from the song "Help!" when discussing parenting and adoption.  It means I need more than love; I need openness, grace, and support to keep going.

Two mommies

On Getting Messy

A few years ago, Chris and I decided it was no longer enough to say and do all the right things without actually touching the hurting world around us.  We weren't satisfied to remain in our comfortable suburban life, raising our two biological sons, so we went out.  Outside the box, outside the established order, outside what we knew.  We looked complicated and messy in the eyes and rolled up our sleeves.

It would be inspirational to say that we love this life.  I would challenge you to join me in this messy work because I would show you pictures and tell you amazing stories and I would say, "It's so worth it."  But the truth is that stepping out of comfort and into the messy lives of other people, touching their wounds and sitting through their dark nights is hard.  And there are days when I wish we hadn't changed anything.  Days when I long for suburban comfort and simple answers.

And then I pull out my Bible.  Something that has been hitting me hard lately is where I find Jesus in these stories.  Jesus is never at the extreme.  He isn't supporting sexism or racism or elitism or terrorism.  Because those are easy.  It's easy to say you don't like people who don't look like you or live in your neighborhood or speak your language.  It's much, much harder to take each person as they come, to get to know them all and realize that some poor people are great, and some are kind of obnoxious.  Just like some rich people are kind, and some are huge a-holes.  Good leaders can be found among men and women.  Jesus knows that, because He knows people.  Jesus can always be found in the middle, in the tension between two extremes.  While politicians debate and opposing sides entrench in their beliefs, Jesus walks among the crowds, healing and teaching.

This is where I am tonight.  I am frustrated and tired and not sure what comes next.  I am looking back with longing at the life I could have continued in and wishing for easy answers.  I don't feel like an inspiration or a paragon.  I can't promise that you won't get dirty in this tension.  But it's the only place I know to find Jesus.

On Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

It was Thanksgiving yesterday.  The day we welcomed our families into our home.  The day we turned the kitchen into a room where adults could eat and talk and laugh and give thanks.  Not the room where peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are made, where pictures are drawn, where board games are played, where junk mail piles up week after week.  We did some actual work to transform this room, but mostly it was smoke and mirrors.  It was "Nobody go upstairs."  It was a time to pretend it always looks that clean.  We said our thanks.  For the support of friends.  For employment. For a year of sobriety.  For family.  For health.

This year, I feel thankful for so much in my life.  For the marriage that is about to celebrate its 10th year.  For the children who continue to grow and change and occasionally offer hugs and kindness.  For the house that keeps us warm and together.  For the friends who actually support me and encourage me.  For the new pastor at our church.  But mostly I'm thankful for all that has changed since last Thanksgiving.

Last year at this time we were a family of six.  Two of our members had spent a total of 7 days in the hospital.  Our cupboard had filled up literally overnight with several new prescriptions that we were still learning how to administer.  When the preschool teacher asked our son what he was thankful for, he burst into tears.  Life had been reduced to figuring out how to get through each day.  There was nothing beyond today, no long-term projects, no plans for the future.  This was especially hard for me, as I am a planner.  I like to look ahead, to be working toward some larger goal.  But I was overwhelmed by each day's needs, only able to think about how to keep each child alive until bedtime.  And even then, I lurked outside doors, I listened to the little breaths, I wondered if they were coming too fast or too slow or too shallow or too raspy.

Life became very narrow.  There wasn't time to discuss, to argue, to talk things through.  And so we put it off.  There wasn't time to fix, to replace, to repair.  And so we put it off.  There wasn't time to rest, to recuperate, to be restored.  And so we put it off.  There was barely time to eat and bathe and wash and read and brush and hold and drop off and pick up.

This is not to complain.  It was what we signed up for, it was what we were promised in those foster parent meetings and trainings.  This is just to explain that it was hard.  That it took everything we had.  It wasn't all bad.  There were many moments of love and understanding and so much growth, the kind that comes from months of difficulty.  I was reminded of the importance of scheduled rest, of intentional nights off, of friends who will step in to carry the load.  I learned that my frequent response to stress was (is?) to withdraw, to hide out with a bar of chocolate and a good book (or a trashy show on Netflix).  And I took steps to make life more sustainable and less draining.

When the call came that our little Girl was leaving, I spent days in tears.  In the busyness I hadn't realized just how attached I had become, just how much I loved this little one who required so much from me.  And after months of feeling as though I had shouldered the burden of our family, of needing to be strong and to keep going so that we didn't all just fall apart, I found myself done, exhausted, unable to maintain the exterior calm.  She left; I cried.  I fell asleep on the couch, in the boys' room, in a lawn chair.  I searched for the energy to cook, to clean, to do anything really, but my reserves were spent.  At the point when I had to say, "I just can't...", my husband stepped in.  He let me sleep.  He made meals.  He rounded up the kids and took them to the park.

This is how life has gone since then.  First, we had to rest.  Like literally sleep.  We had to say No to some things we really wanted to be part of.  I read a huge stack of books.  We had conversations with our kids about why the Girl was no longer living with us.  Next, we had to relearn how to be a family of five.  We couldn't go back to who we were before; we had to learn who we had all become.  We had to stop buying so much food.  And finally, it was time to catch up.  It was time to address all that had been put off.  We had to reconnect in our marriage, we had to reconnect with our kids.  We had to prioritize those home repairs.  We had to clean out those boxes, that room, that closet.

As the holidays approached, I began to feel once again like an equilibrium had been restored.  The kids are doing well in their new schools and new grades.  They are tackling new responsibilities and developing new interests.  I feel like I am once again able to be the giver in my relationships, able to connect with my friends and my husband instead of beginning every conversation with all that is hard in my life.  We finally fixed that drawer, that leak.  Maybe we will even be able to say that we are preparing for what's next instead of catching up with what was left undone.  I'm still reading a few new books each month.  And my days became rapidly easier as school began just a few weeks after the Girl left, and I am left with one child at home.  It felt selfish at first, all this time for myself after doing so much for everyone else.  But rest assured, I enjoy it now.  I am renewed in the afternoon quiet.

Some families stay open immediately after a placement leaves.  Some parents are ready to jump right back on that horse.  As Amy Poehler says, "Good for you, not for me."  We have needed these months of restoration.  We are once again strong, we are once again comfortable.  Perhaps we are now ready for a new challenge.

We are blessed with an abundance for which we give thanks.

Love or Fear

This past year has brought a new relationship into my life.  It's exciting, like most new relationships.  It's challenging, like most new relationships.  And it's tender, which makes me take a protective stance over it, which makes me hesitant to write about it.  But this is what I do, how I process, so here goes:

  My youngest son is adopted.  We took a leap of faith and became foster parents and he came to live with us and joined our family.  That is the happy story that we like to focus on.  That is the truth, but only part of it.  Because every adoption has another side to the story, one that is not so happy.  Every adopted child came from somewhere, someone, and this child is no different.  He was born to a man and a woman who lost custody of him, who seemed to disappear for a few years.  But this past year they resurfaced.  In February, I was invited to meet with his birth mom.  She was in recovery, she was doing well, she wanted to see us.  Me and him.  So we went.  We bundled up and braved the roads on an extremely snowy day, and we waited for her.  As if that isn't weird enough, I was excited.  I kept thinking I should feel nervous or afraid, but I was only looking forward to it.  She came through the door and we hugged and she smiled and I felt a surge of connection with this woman who shares my son's eyes and smile.  We shared a meal, and then she asked to contact me again.  I nodded in agreement and passed our son to her arms so she could walk around with him a bit.  Until that day, the woman we called Mama Jenny had just been a face in a photo, an idea that we talked about from time to time, but now she was flesh and blood and snuggles and laughter.

Two Mamas, February 2014

  A few weeks later, she called us.  Once again we met for a meal and once again she snuggled our son.  And then I invited her to come to church with us the next day.  And she did!  We met again and walked through the park, with all of my kids in tow this time.  We talked more and hugged and took pictures.  My husband and I talked things over and decided we were ready to invite her to our house.  On Memorial Day, we grilled food and my parents joined us and there was Mama Jenny, sitting on the lawn and chasing Michael and talking to my folks.  Every week or so, we would meet up, spend time with the kids, and return to our homes.  We text.  We post photos of each other on Facebook.  We share meals.  We go to the park.  We have picnics.  It feels a little like I got to adopt a sister along with a son.  Because we have more in common than just him.  We played the same instrument in our high school matching bands.  We love animals.  We like coffee and donuts.  We think Michael should eat more vegetables.

  Right about now you're thinking there should be a "but".  People love to interject their concern.  But doesn't Michael get confused?  But you are his "real" mother, right?  But what if someday he chooses her over you?  But what if she takes advantage of you?  But what if she tries to take him?

  Sometimes I'm tempted to let fear creep in to this thing we are doing.  There is no road map, there are no self-help books to guide us, there is only the love I have for our son, which spills over to the woman who gave him life.  Because this is the very bottom line:  I love her.  I love her the way you love your family.  And the Bible says that perfect love casts out fear.  When I'm tempted to draw a line between us, to see her as "them" and the people in my house as "us", I dig into that love.  I choose love, because love is the most powerful force on earth.  I choose inclusion because it just makes sense.  I refuse to give in to hypothetical scenarios that are decades away, when each of us will be different versions of ourselves because we all will have grown and learned more and participated in life together.  As for right now, no, Michael doesn't get confused.  He has always been able to understand this idea of two moms and two dads and brothers that live in the same house and sisters who live somewhere else.  We get confused because our minds are stuck in this mentality that only one woman can be Mom and if he is calling her Mom then I have somehow lost that position.  It's ridiculous.  And this thing about "real" mom vs. (I don't know) fake mom?  It's not a competition.  It's not about labels.  Because I would lose.  I mean, sure I've kissed booboos and changed diapers in the middle of the night and read stories, but she has the trump card.  Without her, he wouldn't be here.  So I don't keep a tally of who is doing more or who is more important.  We are both the Mamas, and I'm fine with it.

Fourth of July 2014

  As far as custody or kidnapping, I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking that our current arrangement is working well for everyone.  I have a beautiful son whom I love.  He has two women who are over the moon in love with him.  She gets to have a relationship with a child she lost once before.  Why would any of us jeopardize that?  Love comes swiftly and without much effort for us, but trust is something we develop over time.  I see the way she cares for him, I see how much she loves him.  I am trusting her more each day, as she continues to show up and be his mom.  I'm learning the beauty of sharing, which didn't seem to make sense all those years ago when I fought with my sister over Barbie dolls and clothes.  It reminds me of the women who came to Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of one child.  The wise king proposed that they cut the child in half, and each woman get part of him to take home. The woman who agreed to this horrifying "solution" was deemed the liar, because a REAL mother would rather see her son raised by another than hurt him.  And so it is with us.  We are both willing to sacrifice a sense of ownership over this boy in order to keep him in one piece.  And love wins.

For Better or Worse

I recently found a copy of my wedding vows while cleaning our bookshelf.  We didn't want to use the traditional vows, vows I recently learned were written by Thomas Cranmer in 1549.  So we spent an afternoon looking through marriage books until we discovered words that fit the marriage we wanted to have.  And we pledged:

I take you to be my spouse, and these things I promise you...

I will be faithful to you and honest with you; 

I will respect, trust, help, and care for you;

I will share my life with you; 

I will forgive you as we have been forgiven;

And I will try with you to better understand ourselves, the world, and God;

Through the best and worst of what is to come as long as we live.

I like the vows we chose, maybe even more now than the day we first read them huddled together at a table in the bookstore.  At the time, it sounded like the kind of marriage I wanted to have, a life that was shared, open minds exploring the world together, with honesty, respect, and trust as the foundation.  But I didn't really know how to live the vows, or how much they would be put to the test.

I didn't know what the best would be, that in marriage the best is the absolute BEST that life has to offer.  I didn't know what it would be like inside that union of two lives.  When marriage is good, it surpasses anything else in the world.  It is better than hot fudge sundaes, better than blue skies and warm sunshine, better than sleeping in.  We all desire to be known in this life, and when my husband looks at me and tells me exactly what I'm thinking, when he correctly identifies my mood, that deepest desire is met.  He gets me!  When we are sitting across the table, delicious food between us, and my belly aches from laughing so hard, but he just keeps going, I have found a joy that goes beyond happiness.  When we find each other and our limbs are entwined and the world around us falls away, I am delighted that we fit together in this perfect, beautiful way.  And when that union creates a life inside me, when my body stretches and grows and he is there every day, wiping my tears and holding my hair and procuring the very food that my body is craving, I am cared for.  Suddenly this little life lies between us, a life we created out of our love, and feeling the warm weight of our child on my chest as I look into the eyes of my husband is the very best of what can come.  These moments come again and again over the years, the wonder and the laughter and the connection and the acknowledgement that we created that.  On my wedding day, I had no idea that these were the bests that were to come.

I was also unprepared for the worsts.  Because when marriage gets bad, it is the absolute WORST that life has to offer.  Once we pronounce our vows and triumphantly exit the church, everything in our lives is now in the hands of another person.  And each of us is imperfect.  The reason this vow exists in the first place is to recognize that something bad will happen.  The person who knows you best will hurt you worst.  The fears and insecurities you reveal can be used against you.  The shortcomings and blind spots you aren't even aware of will be exposed.  The person who shares your home and your bed and your bank account will be selfish.  It will hurt more than anything, more than surgery, more than death, more than a friend's betrayal.  It will break your heart.  You will read through your vows and it will make you cry, because in the worst they can't protect you from each other.  Hurt and angry, you will realize that the hardest one to keep is the pledge to forgive.  Because you have been forgiven freely and instantly, but your heart has grasped your spouse's crimes and refuses to let them go.  For all that lies broken between you, you will wonder if it is time to make the final break, the one from which there is no return.  Because if we exult in the best of times, how can we bail in the worst of them?

Mostly what I have learned is that marriage is often a mix of the two, like the chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream that my son always requests.  Each bite contains some best times and some worst times.  One of my best and favorite memories is the day we spent in Gettysburg, at the Civil War Museum.  But we were only there because our car had broken down during our trip to Eastern Pennsylvania, and we had to stay an extra day while it was repaired.  Another stand out is the day we thought Michael would leave our family, and in our anguish we held each other all night.  Our hearts and minds were one in our grief.  When I was pregnant with Winston, Chris was making me laugh so hard that I started crying.  But then suddenly I was crying, tears flowing, loud sobs crying.  He was stricken and desperate to know what went wrong, and I was frustrated because nothing was actually wrong except my hormones had swung out of control.  We have experienced moments of doubt and triumph, of anger and love, we have lived through successes and failures.  We have broken our vows and we have upheld our vows.  We have climbed the highest mountains and we have stumbled through the lowest valleys.

As far as I can tell, that's a marriage.  It is fun and it is hard.  It is challenging and it is peaceful.  It is satisfying and it is disappointing.  It is the best and it is the worst.  It is ours.

Leaving Home: Part 2 #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!   This is the second part of my post about leaving, and ultimately finding, home. 

What image comes into your mind when you hear the word "wanderlust"?  Do you see a woman on a mountaintop, arms outstretched, wind whipping her hair?  Or maybe exotic locations, waterfalls and ancient temples, a road less traveled?  When I was 21, hopping all over North America as a flight attendant, I would belt out the lyrics to Sara Evans "Born to Fly".  I had the Wanderlust, and I was not alone.  Most of my co-workers lived as nomads.  We had our base city, bare apartments shared with several other people called "crash pads", friends and family that we visited on our days off, but nowhere we called home.  Ever since my family had left Texas, home hadn't been the place where I lived.  So I was searching for it in every city I visited.  In August 2003, I lost a friend.  A roommate.  A fellow flight attendant.  It rocked my world.  I wasn't sure what I believed or who I was, but as I emerged from the haze of grief, I realized that the rest of my life could be a few more weeks or 75 more years.  What was I waiting for?  Finally, I planned a trip that was sure to cure my wanderlust:  I was heading to Paris.  I pictured myself at the Eiffel Tower, eating crepes and wearing fabulous jeans and finally pulling off red lipstick, visiting art museums and in general being the best version of myself.

Somehow in the months to come, my European adventure included my mother.  For me, it was the realization of an adolescent dream, a first step to the life I was meant to live.  I don't know what it was for her. (A week before we left, she asked, with a crinkle in her nose, "Now what is there to do in Paris?"  I gave her an exasperated look and began, "Well the Louvre for one..." and she interrupted, "OOO, yes!  Can we go for a gondola ride on the Louvre?"  I couldn't even begin to explain everything that was wrong with that sentence.)  We flew in to Spain, took another short flight to Frankfurt, where we stayed with friends (Germany in a nutshell:  terrified by the Autobahn, entranced by the medieval castles, loved the cake in the Black Forest, sampled blood sausage).  And then....we boarded a train for Paris.

I felt euphoric as we hurtled toward the City of Lights, my nose pressed against the glass.  We found a cute little hotel run by a married couple (who made cafe au lait and baguettes for breakfast), ate some dinner at a nearby restaurant, only had 3 fights between the train station and our shared bed, and I fell asleep to the noises of the city.  In the morning, I was ready for Paris to sweep me off my feet.  My mom and I walked all day.  We saw a brasserie, a bucherie, a pharmacie.  The Arc de Triomphe.  The Louvre.  The Champs Elysee.  We bought chic clothes.  At twilight on my mother's 45th birthday, we dined at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.  And I fell asleep disappointed.  Because there was also the endless claxoning of emergency vehicles.  The overwhelming smell of Armpit on the Underground.  The aggressive Asian tourists.  And my mom was the only familiar sight.

When people asked, "How was Paris?", their eyes alight, waiting breathlessly for some tale of adventure, all I could say was, "It wasn't what I thought it'd be."  In all my planning, I'd forgotten a very powerful force.  Like Lord Voldemort, I had underestimated LOVE.  Going to Paris was the most important thing to me....even more important than the ring I was wearing on my left hand.  You see, all through school and flying, I'd also been falling in love.  I kept returning to Ohio for him, once a week, every other week (3 weeks apart only twice, and how those weeks dragged).  A month before my trip, he'd placed the ring on my finger and asked for my hand, but he hadn't factored into my plans.  Each day I had struggled with European pay phones and walked away frustrated, unable to connect across the time zones.  I just wanted to hear his voice.  And, while it didn't have the outcome I thought it would, my journey across the ocean did help me realize where my home was.  It was in his arms.

I started to resent Ohio a little less as we settled there, not far from the place where I'd felt like a Texas girl in an Ohio world.  In 2007, I gave birth to my beautiful baby James and we bought a house with a big yard and rooms for the other children I suddenly wanted.  And it's through the eyes of my boys that I see and appreciate what makes Ohio our home.  Jumping into a pile of multi-hued leaves.  The many, many uses for snow (snowballs, snowmen, snow cream).  The excitement when football seasons starts, though I'll never forsake my Dallas Cowboys.  And the church downtown that welcomes us, loves us, teaches me the truest meaning of family.

Chris asked me recently if I still wanted to move away, and I was finally able to answer NO.  My need to feel significant isn't defined by a place, it's filled in the arms of the people I love.  It doesn't matter where we lay our heads, as long as we lay together.

Emily T. Wierenga, award-winning journalist and author of 4 books, has released her first memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. They say the book is like “Girl Meets God” meets “Wild” meets “Eat, Pray, Love.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy here.

Leaving Home: Part 1, a #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! 

Have you seen these ads on Facebook that try to get you to buy custom t-shirts?  Ones that say "I crochet so I don't strangle people" or "I'm a programmer; trust me", because some sort of computer algorithm (look at me, using words I don't fully understand) has taken your personal information in order to sell you something.  One that pops up on my feed frequently says "I'm a Texas girl living in an Ohio world", and every time I see it I think about when I used to be someone who would have bought that shirt and worn it as often as sweat and body odor would allow.  I remember being a scrawny tomboy who loved the Dallas Cowboys and pecan pie, who helped her mother make tortillas in a special pan and wore the burns like a badge of honor.  I remember ducking into a large sewer drain with my sister to get out of a sudden hail storm, riding bikes for hours, neighbors named Bubba and Nacho and Fay.  And I remember the mutiny that rose up in me when my mother announced that we were moving, that she missed her family and we were going home.  Except that Texas was my home, and Rocky and Cathy and Jayne and Freddie were my family and I had finally reached the age where I had real friends that would call on the phone, even though it bored me to talk about clothes for more than a minute

But I really couldn't do anything to stop the move, other than watch the boxes pile up in my room and glare at my mother whenever she talked about how great our lives would be in the North.  This is how little my opinion factored in:  the day that was chosen to pack up our house and leave was my last day of fifth grade.  The day when teachers threw out the lesson plans and brought in sno-cone machines, when recess lasted for hours instead of 30 minutes, when children were emboldened to tell each other their true feelings.  I was sitting beside my mother, the Dallas skyline whizzing past us as we headed to Oklahoma, then Missouri.  And I still remember the conversation that we had that morning, the promise I made to make new friends in our new home, to get along.  My sister apparently made no such concession, because she kept the clock in her room on Central time for more than a year after we settled in the Ohio suburbs (and I wish for the life of me that I knew what happened to finally make her change it, but I'm drawing a blank).  I kept my promise that summer, as we walked our new town to get our bearings, since there were sidewalks everywhere and quiet streets  and everything fit in six square miles.  And I kept my promise as I walked to school each morning, after my dad had left for work and my mother took my sister to the middle school on her way to the hospital.  I listened to the kids around me talking, and I felt like an anthropologist studying an aboriginal tribe.  They used different words, like clique for the way people clumped together at recess and queer (which I thought meant when a boy liked another boy) for when something was strange.  And when I finally did speak, they asked me why I didn't have an accent, and I just shrugged, because the accent I heard most in Texas was the lilting way Hispanic women spoke, and the "Texas" accent heard on tv was more common further south.  But I couldn't keep my promise at our new church, when my parents brought me to the Wednesday night program, when I was expected to walk down the hallway by myself to a room full of people I didn't know, never mind that they were my own age.  That was when I cried and begged them not to leave me, but they did anyway, so that I had to walk down the hallway into a room full of strangers with a splotchy face and red eyes. (This is one of those moments I think about now, and I still don't know if they did the right thing.  Do you push your shy, awkward baby out of the nest or let her stay home with her nose in a book?)   Then one day, on my walk to school, I saw something I'd never seen before.  It was like little ice on each blade of grass.  Later, I learned it is called "frost".  When I got to school, I asked if it had snowed, and I got funny looks. (Much like labor pains, once you've experienced snow, you don't mistake a tiny pattern of cold for the real thing again.)  Actually, I seemed to get funny looks most of the times I spoke.  The boys called me by my last name and the girls had apparently decided who their friends were in kindergarten, and I bounced around trying to find my place.  A year is a long time to go without a friend.  But suddenly sixth grade was ending and I had found Melissa.  Of course, I didn't know then what she would mean to me over the years; pretty much all I knew was the distance from Texas to Ohio, and that people stopped saying Coke and started saying Pop somewhere in between.

That was the turning point for me, finding one person who liked me just the way I was.  The next year, I joined the school band and made more friends.  I had a boyfriend or two, which was more a cause for anxiety than excitement.  I found an identity I could live with, at least for a few years.  I was the nerdy girl who got good grades and used her quick sarcasm to make her friends laugh.  "My So-Called Life" aired for a year, and I watched each episode, entranced by Claire Danes and her struggle to be a good daughter, a fun friend, a desirable girlfriend.  Like many adolescents, I struggled to have control.  It seemed that everything that went wrong could be solved by a change of location.  The kids at my school are snobs.  The winters are too cold.  The budding trees make me sick every spring.  My 18th birthday stood out like a bright yellow Finish line.  Once I got there, everything would be different.  When the college brochures started arriving in the mail my junior year, I tossed every one that was located in Ohio.  I perused the ones from Wisconsin and New York, but they went in the trash once I found out how snowy their winters were.  What remained were schools in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, and of course, my beloved Texas.  I had the grades and test scores to go where I wanted, and that was anywhere but here.  But I didn't have the money to pay for any of them.  I still remember the desperation as my senior year drew to a close, trying to come up with a plan, some kind of loan that would get me out of Ohio and on to the life I was supposed to be living.  Finally, in June, after graduation, I admitted defeat and took the short trip up the highway to Kent with my dad, filled out an application and took a tour and went home with an acceptance letter.  It was affordable and offered the degree I wanted, but it was not the grand experience I thought college would be.  So I graduated early and took a job as a flight attendant.  I stepped off the plane in a new city every day, and I invited the world to audition for me.  DANCE.  SING.  Give me a reason to never leave.  I explored New York City and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I strolled through Jacksonville, Florida and Greensburg, South Carolina.  I ate barbecue in Charleston and lobster in Maine.  I flew to California and Canada and Cincinnati.  And I felt like Goldilocks, because none of them felt quite right.

There was one trip I was saving, a destination I had very high expectations for, the one I was certain would fit like no other city on earth....

I'll be posting the conclusion of my journey on Saturday.  In the meantime, purchase Emily T. Wierenga's new book, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look on amazon NOW!!  ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards Emily’s non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree (www.thelulutree.com) is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.

Nature part 1: Fire

I love being outside.  I love Nature.  I dress my children in weather-appropriate clothes and we go for long walks, we stop at streams and hunt for tadpoles at the edges of lakes.  We pick flowers and leaves and we collect rocks and sticks, and we find bugs let them crawl on our hands.  We lay in the grass and watch the clouds moving overhead, we return after the sun sets to watch the stars reveal themselves.  Being around Nature fills me with wonder.  We planted seeds last weekend, and although we prepared the soil and we watered them on the days it didn't rain, we didn't make anything.  We are like middle men, fetching the seeds and putting them in the ground, but we didn't make the seeds and we didn't make the ground, and now something completely new is poking through the soil and it's amazing.

Here's the thing:  the first sentence in the Bible says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  Genesis 1:1  I'm guessing you knew that, even if you've never read the Bible, even if you've never read Genesis.  It's one of those pervasive ideas, like "Til death do us part" and "Peace be with you...and also with you" and "And now you know...the rest of the story" that any American person has ingrained; they probably don't know its origin or even the first time they heard it.  What I've been thinking lately is what if there's a reason for that?  What if that's the first thing in the Bible just in case some people never read further?  What if that is God's little hint to us that whatever isn't addressed in the rest of the book, whatever questions we have, the answers are found all around us, in Nature.  What if Nature is God's cheat sheet?

I have read the Bible, the whole thing, cover to cover.  It is full of good stuff, confusing stuff, boring stuff.  But it never mentions abortion.  That word is nowhere to be found in the Good Book.  Neither is factory or car.  The word autism is absent, although there are plenty of stories about people who are crippled, disfigured, impaired physically.  The people with these ailments who met Jesus and believed in Him were healed, but many sick and handicapped people never had that honor.  The events and people contained in the Bible are all from a pretty small geographic area, if you consider the whole Earth.  We don't read about Australia or South Africa or even the United States  My point is that our modern world can seem vastly different from the time when Jesus lived, or the age of prophets and pharoahs and gardens and talking serpents.  Except that the world hasn't changed, not if you look around at all that God gave us when he created it.

So then...what can we learn about God by observing Nature?  Let's start with fire.  We have been making fires in our backyard this past month.  Our whole family gathers around to watch the flames and be near the heat.  My husband and I take turns building and maintaining the fire.  We try to keep the kids from throwing things in, like their plush toys or a bucket of water.  Neither is good for the fire.  The fire needs dry, flammable items to consume.  It has to start small.  There is no way around this.  If my sticks are wet, or too big, the fire isn't going to happen.  So I gather some dried leaves, I place small twigs on them, then I strike the match.  It's best to try to stick the match in a few different spots, just in case one doesn't burn.  The little points of fire quickly spread, meeting in the middle and then things begin to happen.  The thin leaves burn up fast, so I have to have the twigs ready, and maybe a few slightly bigger sticks.  The leaves get the fire going, but the wood burns longer.  The next phase is where it sometimes gets tricky.  See, I can't keep adding leaves to keep the fire going.  I'm not sure why, but what ends up happening is I just get a big pile of ashes.  I have to add wood at the early point, and then I have to start progressively throwing bigger pieces of wood in.  I can't sustain a fire on small incendiary items.  If I want the fire to last (and believe me, I do), then what goes in the fire has to change.  Also, there's a bit of an art to placement.  What is already burning has to touch what I want to burn next.  They need to have a point of connection, but they can't be too close.  A log laying directly on top of another log of equal size will choke the fire, give it nowhere to go.  It's the same for logs lying next to each other but not touching...how is the fire going to spread?  Another important element to fire-building is boundaries.  Probably our fire wouldn't go too far beyond our circle, because it has been a rainy spring, and most of the grass around it is green and moist.  But what about the blanket our family sits on, or our clothes?  If the fire spread out of control, it would burn us.  It might even damage our house, our neighbor's house.  We have to be intentional about where the fire is going in order to enjoy its benefits and not be destroyed by it.

Personally, I think you can apply this metaphor lots of ways.  It could apply to leadership and empowering other people: we light their fires and they in turn light others, and the fire grows.  We could compare evangelism to fire, because the gospel started small in Jerusalem and now it's preached in every corner of the earth.  But I want to talk about the most personal aspect of Christianity:  our relationship with God.  For me, I feel like we started out like those dry leaves.  Learning about God in Sunday school as a child, reading the Bible with my dad...it was like a match was struck and placed against my heart.  But adolescence was such a distracting time; I ignored the fire and focused on getting good grades instead.  All of my attention was on getting into the right college, being liked by my friends, trying not to embarrass myself.  The fire never got very big, and my schoolwork and attempts to fit in were like big, wet branches that inhibited its growth.  I was 18 when I looked for the fire again, and realized it had gone out.  I was in the dark.  Well, did I really need the fire?  Could I just get through life without it?  It was worth a try.  In the dark, I couldn't see, but dry leaves were piling up again, and soon another match ignited them.  This time, I didn't take the fire for granted.  I looked at it closely, I studied it.  I put more leaves on.  I started going back to church, I reached for my Bible again.  I joined a young adult group with my (soon to be) husband and started asking questions.  Those questions, and the patient people who answered them were like wood in my fire.  Beyond knowing what the Bible says, I learned how to apply it to my life.  It started to become more real, more important.  Shortly after I got married, I was baptized.  Now, of course, the water doesn't really work with the fire, but baptism in my relationship with God was like lighter fluid.  The fire spread all over, started approaching some bigger logs.  At this point, I started to feel the heat.  A little fire doesn't really spread much warmth.  It takes a bigger, more concentrated burn to really catch on, and once it does, it no longer needs constant control and tending.  The fire knows what to do, and it burns away what isn't necessary.  It was at this point that my life and my heart really began to change, to take on the shape that the fire was making and not the one I wanted it to be.  I learned about love, about what it really means to love my neighbors and the poor and the lepers.  I was ready for bigger logs.  So in came fear and insecurity and shame, and the fire took over and burned them.  As it grew, I think my fire began to be noticeable to people around me.  But I can't just tear down the boundaries of my fire pit and let the fire go every where.  I have to let people approach me with their little sticks, let them prod my glowing center and take the flame to their own pile of leaves.

This is how I see God in Nature.  This is how my heart has grown and changed, and how I'm learning to let God in.  Sometimes this blog is an overflow for that fire, a place to burn a little longer.