weeds

In April, He said this.

I was going to pick up my boy and I saw him.  Randomly standing on the edge of the street, spade and spray bottle in hand.  His bright red shirt caught my attention and when he looked up, I knew.

He was wearing sunglasses.

I drove back around the corner and him, the red shirt man, stood up and watched me.  I heard him say, behind my ears, "I am weeding".

There for a few days I had it, the clarity.  The removal of the old, to be replaced by the new.  The choking, toxic gone, to give room to breathe, to grow.

Until today.  When He came there, behind my ears again.  I am reminded of this now and the tears come.

So now my prayer is different. Soften the soil, then.  

Ears full of so many children's voices.  I envision a little house with green shutters and I just saw him hand me a gardening spade.

I'm returning to the field.  And though I've doubted, perhaps my heart always knew.

As I've said before, I have a feeling, perhaps in a different capacity, He will lead me back to it.  

first steps

On the fourth, Judah took his first steps. 

I wasn't even really paying attention, trying to calculate my student loan repayments.  I looked up just in time to see him turn away from his activity table and take two tentative steps towards our entertainment center. 

I screamed and hollered and clapped so loud it scared him and he fell back on his behind.  And then started clapping for himself too.  Big, gummy grin and all. 

So for the past few days, we've been practicing.  A few steps here and there.  One, maybe two, as many as four.  He maneuvers a funny little side shuffle, but always claps for himself. 

I was standing in the kitchen the other night and Judah was standing there with me.  He was trying to get to me, but was using the kitchen cabinets for support.  Shuffling and holding the wall.  I picked him up and stood him in the middle of the room and reached out my arms to him.  He looked around tentatively, realizing all his support and security and safety were at least two or three steps away.  In every direction. 

And as I reached for him, I heard it. 

Just like always.  In the whisper. 

Becoming a parent will help you understand the nature of God in a way only being a parent can.  It's just a facet of him, an aspect of his character.  But I couldn't explain it with words.  The same way I can't prepare my pregnant friends for what's coming.  The same way no one could prepare me.  It transcends whatever language we choose... we don't have the words for it. 

But in that moment, God bent down in our kitchen floor and reached for me.  He pointed to the catastrophe that has been this past week.  The catastrophe, which had catapulted me into the middle of the floor. 

He reminded me, gently, of what it takes to make us grow.  The pivotal moments, the turning points, the inciting incidences, which are required to tell a good story.  To lead us away from the wall, away from the safety, away from the security, to the middle of the floor.  Where the good story is being told. 

And He called to me.  In a voice so familiar.  I am reminded He loves me, and is calling me to Him. 

making room for the answer

There hasn't even been time to process, really.  To sit down and think.  The pace has been rapid and I feel very much like I've been hunkered down, head bent, shoulders pressed against the weight of it all.  Push forward.  With all my might. 

It always works out, you know?  I've only been homeless a few times, but even then I had a couch to sleep on.  When I run out of food, more is always provided.  A way is always made, it seems, when there is no way. 

This is a hard way to live.  Things have been hard for a long time, and though there is some joy in each day, I wish mine and Judah's story would take a quick turn.  A new season would be such a blessing.

But this morning I made a phone call.  Defiantly stared into the face of all the doubt and worry and said "no -- no thank you."

I hope He takes this as the act of faith I feel like it was.  Because logic says I should have accepted.  Logic says I didn't make the responsible decision.  On paper, it made sense.  But it didn't make sense for our lives.  It didn't make sense for the story being written.  The world wanted me to write a story about a Volvo.  But God's trying to write an adventure. 

I heard Him say, "you're not done there".  And I heard Him say, "time is a gift".  And I heard Him say, "trust Me in this.  Trust me enough, for once, to stay right where you are." 

It would be the same day other options would fall upon me as if the ceiling had collapsed.  The same day that He would offer alternatives, some hope of provision.  Just like He always does though -- knowing my eyes seek so far ahead.  One step at a time.  One set of directions at a time.  He knows me, knows how easily I get overwhelmed. 

Prayers are being answered that I don't remember praying.  The control freak in me wants to pray the prayer, hear the answer, and then have a story to tell.  It doesn't glorify me at all, it just helps me understand.  And it's a part of my testimony, how I help others see God.  But that's not always how God works. 

I'm coming to realize my prayers don't have to be specific for us to be taken care of.  Occasionally, for dramatic effect, I think He shows up and shows off to make Himself abundantly clear.

Other days, He wants us to bend close.  To recognize the obscurity, the general "working out of things", as His hand moving.

Does that make sense? 

I am not powerful because I pray.  My life doesn't unfold daily because I remember to ask.  There is power in prayer and being bold enough to ask for what we need.  But I was, and am, reminded of Matthew 6.  And my guess is the lilies don't spend their days asking for rain. 

Intimacy is in the details.  In the quiet details of doing life together.  This is where so many go wrong with their relationship with God.  I am not a good Christian, but I surely know the Father.  If only because we share my life.  Sometimes I forget this.  Sometimes I forget He already sees.  Sometimes I forget that He wants to help us, and He doesn't have to wait for my go ahead. 

So a few weeks ago when I started praying "please make a way", He knew it was my way of saying "I have no clue what the hell I am doing.  Fix this."

Fix this.

I am reminded of worship service I attended at Southland a few years ago.  Burned into my memory so well is Amanda Carter singing "Hosanna".  She stopped in the middle of the song and explained what Hosanna meant, literally translated.  Come fix this.  Come down, come here.  Come fix what we cannot. 

So that's what I started praying.  Make a way, where there seems to be no way.  When I am fresh out of ideas, when I have no more solutions, when I am at a loss.  Please, fix this.  Take care of us.  Help me take care of us. 

I do not believe in the old adage of, "God helps those who help themselves".  Too often I have seen Him stoop down and love on all of us.  Too many people get what they don't deserve.  God does not rely on us to be good.  He is not a good father because we are good children. 

I believe we are called to do what we can.  To be responsible for what we've been given.  To use our time, energy, resources, gifts, to build a life and leave a legacy.  I also think we need lots of help.  I also don't believe in the old adage "God won't give you more than you can handle."

If you and I were together right now, I would have said that and sighed out of exasperation.  Maybe thrown my arms and up and sank back into my chair.  I hate the saying.  Not until you are staring at a load at your feet, too heavy for you to pick up alone, will you ever understand how ABSURD it is.  How naïve it is. 

He wants us to ask for help.

God helps.  He does.  He doesn't need my permission to do it.  And He sure doesn't need our ideas to help Him figure out how.

He just loves it when we trust Him enough to ask.  

Go ahead.  Tell Him you're scared.  Tell Him you have no idea where to go from here.  Sometimes, when we finish His sentences, we get it all wrong.  Let's learn how to give Him time to talk back.  Make room for Him to answer. 

a purple horse

I was pumping gas.  That's all.  Had just finished a difficult workout and my tank was on empty.  Literally and figuratively, I suppose.  I don't pray deliberately very often any more.  But I pray continuously.  Fragments of prayer, scattered throughout my day.  And I may, in that moment of emptiness, have just whispered: what the hell am I supposed to do?

I turned around to go into the gas station and get a drink when I saw him.

Sitting on a toolbox in the bed of a Dodge Ram.  Legs extended.  Hands, each finger shining with a silver ring, folded in his lap.  He wore sunglasses and a blue bucket hat.  I suppose he could have been looking anywhere, what with those sunglasses on and all.  But I swear his steady, quiet gaze followed me as I walked into the gas station.

I tried not to stare.  But I knew who he was.  And a smile spread across my face.

It's been a while since I've seen Him.  Can't quite remember the last time it was, actually.  But I do know He came with a different message this time.

Life has been a bloody, chaotic battle these days.  I can barely make ends meet financially, we need a new home, it's time to pay back student loans, there are lawyer fees to be paid, I'm waiting to be accepted into grad school, and trying to decide if I even should go to grad school.  And work keeps getting worse instead of better.

On top of it all, I feel like I'm fighting this battle alone.  Loneliness is cutting my legs out from under me.

For about two years now I have associated the color red with God's presence.  You'll have to go look in the archives to help me remember exactly why, but it had nothing to do with anything theological or divine.  Just connecting a prayer to an answer.  Just me being Gideon.  Red, being His answer.

So here He was, sitting in the bed of a truck, quiet and still as could be.  Wearing blue.

Am I crazy?  Because I diverted my eyes and whispered quietly, just because it's blue, doesn't mean that's not You, does it?

I walked into the gas station and paid for a drink and walked back out.  I didn't see who was driving the truck.  But there He was, still sitting right where I left him.  As the truck started up and pulled out of the parking lot, He didn't even budge.  Not a flicker of movement, His dark, wrinkled face staring in my direction the whole time.

It's Me...

I climbed into my car and sat there for just a minute.  I am crazy.  For seeing things and hearing things and believing in things.  But it's the story -- it's the story that moves me.  It's the quiet, grandiose, simplistic, desperate measures He takes to speak to me... propelling it all forward.

Shake it up.  

I pulled away with one word floating in between my ears.  He'd left me with a new association.  Him in his blue bucket hat and all the glory hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.  A new season is coming, a season of peace to follow this season of war.  A new season is coming.

~

He (not my sunglass wearing manifestation of God, I mean someone else) texted me the other day.  Two years later.  Here he was.  Inappropriately friendly.  Lighthearted.  

I almost didn't answer.  Because I'm not sure what to say to the one who started it all.  I was overcome by memories, tracing everything back like dominoes, like a ripple.  To the source.  

He, for the record, was not the source.  He, if we were to identify him, was the straw.

The source is probably somewhere deep within myself.  A fatal flaw of my very own.  A chink in my own armor.  But there have been others, some well intentioned and some selfish, who have added insult to injury.  In a terribly concentrated amount of time.  

Three of them had the same name.  And were all awful for their own various reasons.  All hurtful, all dangerous.  All serving a myriad of purposes.  Wearing me down, weighing me down.

But he, the straw, came along.  And broke me.  With the big promises of the church.  And an overblown sense of self.  All masking his own hurt and shortcomings.  Which were eventually what all came crashing down on me.

And for a while, I had the bruises to prove it.

The straw that broke the camel's back.  

Literally.  It all came crashing down.

Now here I am.  Two years later.

Two years later and now here is an apology.  

So I listened.  I dug around a little bit and looked for the grudge I really wanted to bear.  Searched for the hurt I swore was still there, or the wound, which surely was still bleeding.

But the apology had come after the forgiveness.  Which is truly the sweetest thing.  Because what the enemy had meant for evil, to break me, to destroy my hope, had led to today.  What was once a wound is now just a scar.

It all has led to Judah and to the small, small victories.  

And a heart more capable of grace.

Actually, he called me gracious, probably not knowing it was the greatest compliment he could have paid me.  The calling on my life -- tattooed on me permanently.  

We will call this redemption, a greater victory.  

And I felt the heavy door swing shut.  

~

So now I am faced with the unknown of a new season.  I can tell I've been given some autonomy.  Sheets of paper have been laid out before me and He's just told me to draw.  There are guidelines: to learn and provide.  But other than that, I've been given no instructions.  

Just draw.  

Just move forward.

The graciousness in closure is intertwined with the ambiguity of a brand new season.  And I stand awkwardly in the hallway, holding on to what is mine, and I know the next step is crucial.

Not because there is a right or wrong answer.  A right or wrong direction.

But because it will take us, my little family, somewhere brand new.

I am holding onto the image of Him riding away in the back of the pick up, and the sweet word, sounding so much like a promise.

Peace.

And even though I don't feel it, and I know better than to believe "peace" is equal to "calm" is equal to "easy", there's some courage to be found here.

My lips burn with a thousand prayers I need to pray.  And my feet feel heavy.  

But there is no going back.  I have a purple horse to draw.  

even small victories

We sat at Pazzo's last week celebrating my best friend's 27th birthday.  Her cousin was sitting across the table from us, and she is expecting her first child.  We had begun talking about this subject in the parking lot and the conversation had followed us inside.  Bucket lists.

We are all familiar with the concept.  Maybe have even written one ourselves.  The list of things we want to do before our lives are over.  A list of accomplishments we want to strive towards.  Some may be very arbitrary, others may have deep meaning behind them.  Superficial.  Life changing.  In our control, or out of our control.

But Rene was talking about a bucket list just for this year.  No long term goals.  Nothing unattainable.  But a list of realistic expectations for the next year of her life.

I've been struggling to regroup lately.  To find my pace, my stride, in the chaos of my life.  Going through the motions of a full work day, maintaining a household, keeping track of responsibilities.  Judah's smiling face reminds me of the little joys in each day.  But the pace... we have to find the pace.

 This blog has been a metronome.  A place to come to calibrate, to re-evaluate.  Through international travel, through degree seeking, through urban ministry, through pregnancy, through new motherhood.  This is where I come.

And I realized the night at Pazzo's, I need a bucket list.  Something written down, something expressed. A voiced goal to work towards, for the year I am 25.

I have such good intentions.  I mean well, I want to do better.  Be better.  But expectations are sometimes set too high, the obstacles are sometimes too big, my faith not big enough.  There is often so much fear.  Fear of large change.  Fear of inadequacy.  (That I might try, give it everything I have, and fail miserably as I so often have.)

But.  I want Judah to grow up to be the kind of man who understands the connection between his actions and the harvest, who understands consequences, who believes in himself.  Whose reach exceeds his grasp.  How beautiful it will be, to watch my little boy grow up to be that kind of man.

I watch him now as he is trying to learn to walk.  He pulls himself up on a couch, a chair, an ottoman, smacks it with his hands and quarrels at me.  He is proud of himself.  Closely I watch as he sets his eyes on another piece of furniture next to him and reaches.  Little arm outstretched, adjusting his feet, and reaching.  Every once in a while he will realize the other piece of furniture is too far away and he will lower himself to the carpet, scoot himself over, and pull himself up.  But he does not quit.  He is too small to let the fear of falling keep him from trying.

It's amazing what I am learning from my 8 month old.

So I will reach.

And maybe my arms are not long enough, maybe I do not have enough balance.

But I have to try.  Because progress needs to be made.  Change needs to happen.  A life must be built.

I have chronicled my life here.

A few years ago, I had entitled this blog "in medias res".  A latin phrase, meaning "in the very middle of things".  A literary term meaning joining the story in the very middle of it.

I have returned to this blog title, because I know nothing that represents this stage better.  I am in the very middle of things, learning how to be a young woman, a mother, a social worker, and a healthy human being.

Hopefully, by the time it is time to wrap up my 25th year, I will be able to tell you about progress.  I will be able to tell you about growth.  I will inevitably have hurt and heartbreak to share, but it is time for victories.

Even if they are small ones.

My list is not complete.  But tonight I wanted to share with you what I'm working on in my head.  Know that this blogspot will be used to chronicle this journey as well -- every aspect of it, in all its spirituality, crudeness, texture, and whatever grace I have left.  Which means I may share a recipe and a poem in the same day.  A product review and a prayer.  We're in the middle of the story here.

I'm trying to write a good one.

So far all I have is:

• Start grad school (I've applied for a program, set to begin in August)
• Find a new living space for Judah and myself (with a washer and dryer)
• Meet predetermined weight/BMI/strength goals

25

This is not where I thought I would be at 25, I told him. 

Where did you think you'd be then? His response was immediate.  Logical.  But I came undone. 

~

Bob posted on Twitter (@bobgoff) today: "fear never leaves a ransom note when it steals our lives; we'll just notice we can't find our imagination anymore."

I turned 25 yesterday.  A quarter of a century old.  I told him this was not where I thought I would be.  And by that I meant I didn't think it would take me so long to graduate college.  I didn't think I'd work in foster care.  I didn't think I would be single.  I didn't think I'd be single... and a mommy. 

But then he returned with the question and I grappled for an answer, which I suppose does not really exist.  Or at least, I cannot remember.  I know what has surprised me about my life, I know what I did not expect.  But as far as what my best laid plans were, I cannot even remember.  I am so far off base, I missed the mark so severely.

That's the way of it, I guess.  People teach you to make a plan and follow it through.  But life is not as much a road as it is an obstacle course.   If you think and believe as I do (which is unlikely) you don't believe your course is charted out down to the eighth of a mile.  There's a starting point.  There's an ending point. 

And the rest is all story.  Waiting to be told.

No hero (no good one anyway) gets from beginning to end easily.  No real hero takes the shortest, safest, quickest distance between two points.  Because that is not a good story.  Don taught us this, remember? 

There is a possibility I was picking the story about the Volvo when I was younger.  There was just enough edginess to what I was choosing for my life, no one questioned it.  At 17, the story involved the blue-eyed Georgia boy, a youth center, getting married right out of high school, and having babies.  Somehow then it was about the bearded one, about helping people, about community, and getting dirty.  Then it was about the third world, the ghetto, the diversity.  It was about spiritual gifts and $5 pizzas in a dental clinic and glitter on the floor.  It was about non-profits and I told people it was about Jesus. 

Then it became about Judah.

I see the progression, I really do.  I wasn't telling a bad story.  I was telling the beginning part of my story.  Not an unimportant part.  A necessary part. 

My character was building as I took each stepping stone in a different direction.  Diverting from the original path -- the path I think everyone assumed I would take.  Every time I walked up on a drug deal, every time I found children home alone, every argument I had about living somewhere safe, every time I was denied a job or a spot in an educational program... the path changed.  Every time I connected a prayer to an answer, my head was turned.  Toward the way I was supposed to take.

I thought about the "end" I suppose in no certain terms.  But looking back I realize I never thought much farther ahead than 23.  I was sure by my early twenties I'd have a degree and a husband and we'd start having babies and depending on who that husband was... would depend on how this story went.  I think then for a while I thought just farther beyond, and pictured myself in Africa.  Pictured myself in Atlanta.  But never too far ahead.  Never make too many plans. 

Good thing.

~

Judah has not been sleeping.  Double ear infection, teething, big growth spurts, and he is sleeping in fits and spurts; waking up at 2am ready to play and sing and play "patty cake".  Judah has not been sleeping, so I have not been sleeping. 

Last night he fell asleep early and I curled up in the chair and started reading.  I realized I haven't been able to write because I haven't been reading.  My life is a story about depletion right now -- as tragic as that may sound.  My tank is empty, my well is dry.  All energy and effort I have goes toward surviving, providing.  Flourishing is not priority.  But I don't think that's the kind of story I have to tell for much longer.

I heard Judah whimper in his room.  As routine, I listened for a few minutes.  He has nightmares sometimes and cries out in his sleep, rolls over and dozes off again.  That was not the case last night.  He whimpered, then cried, then yelled and I heard him stand up in the crib.  So I went and got him, all 22 pounds of him.  He's sleepy still, so his body dangles as I carry him back to the living room with me.  Almost eight months old and I am overwhelmed with his size.  I sat back down in my chair, frustration building, exhaustion creeping in.  Will we ever sleep through the night, I wonder.  And then Judah folds his little hands on my chest and his head drops.  Deeply breathing, his cheeks are smushed up against my chest, and the tears come.

Slowly at first, and I am alarmed by them. 

Then like a flood, a torrent of them.  They fall on his little, blonde, fuzzy head and I remember a few times as a child when they cried over me.  I didn't like it, really.  I didn't understand it.  But I do now.  I understand now what it means to not remember what was supposed to happen.  To only remember sitting in that chair, with a big, baby boy with fuzzy blonde hair snuggled close under your chin.  To remember thinking he'd never be this big and knowing you'd think the same in ten years.  To think, this is not where I was supposed to be, but deeply understanding I had found where I was meant to be. 

This is not how I want it to stay.  I do not want to live in a state of survival, I do not want Judah to be raised in uncertainty. 

~

 

Normally, a birthday post would involve a re-cap of the last year.  Reflection and reminiscing and lessons learned.  But I am too tired for that.  Instead, it is a prayer.  A benediction.  Truth spoken over, anticipated.

 

 

May what happens next, lead the way into the best story.  May our plans, my plans, pale in comparison to what You have in store.  May I never give up hope, or lose respect for those fragile things.  May ends meet and our prayers be answered.  May we see provision and connection and will You speak to the right people about us.  Make a way, where there seems to be none.  Next year may we be in a place even better than we were able to ask for, or imagine.  May our lives be a testimony of grace, resilience, and gumption. 

 

Beyond that, there's really nothing left to say. 

Consider the Lilies

I cannot get it together today.  I feel horrible and the day is dragging and the office is freezing and I'm just ready to go home.

Here's my week, in a nutshell:

J has a double ear infection.  I thought it was teething.  We all did.  Orajel, by the way, doesn't fix pressure on the ear drums.

I had to interview for MY OWN JOB on Friday of last week.  It was supposed to be a formality, so an interview would be on the books. To keep my boss out of trouble so that if I ever lose my mind and screw things up royally, he can say that he did his best.  An informal, protocol interview turned into a panel interview.  That lasted almost an hour. 

Good news, though, I got the job!  Yes that's right.  The job I have been doing solo for a month now.  The job I've technically been doing since last August.  It's fine though.  Except I was really pissed.

During the not-teething-but-ear-infection-sleepless-weekend J and I just had, I pulled a muscle in my neck/trapezius area.  That special muscle, which helps you turn your head from side to side.  Woke up yesterday morning in almost blinding pain and have been wearing icy hot patches ever since. 

More good news.  I got my raise yesterday.  The one I was sure I was going to have to fight tooth and nail to get.  It's not much.  I still won't be able to pay for childcare this summer.  But it's better than before.  And really, I guess unless you are changing positions or companies altogether, promotional raises don't really change your paycheck.  Not when you're a social worker.

Tomorrow is the big day.  I called and fussed at my attorney's assistant yesterday because I can't get a hold of my attorney.  Poor girl.  I think maybe I should have been an attorney -- but then I believe I'd only get more annoyed with the petty shit people bring to the table.  When there are murders to be solved and rapists to imprison and terrorists to sentence... I'd be more than a few shades of pissed about a custody case like mine.  Eh.  But that's if I was an attorney.  Which I'm not.  So answer the damn phone. 

I woke up yesterday morning and saw a lawn care service sign, and all it read was: "Consider the Lilies".  I knew exactly what I was supposed to take away from that.  So was I surprised when things went a little more smoothly yesterday?  No.  Was I surprised that my day came together after a sleepless night of praying... for affirmation, for provision, for direction?  Not at all. 

Am I heartbroken that the one prayer, which consistently does not get answered, is the one for companionship?  Am I lonely beyond expression?  Do I look at my life and sometimes wonder why anyone would choose to walk into this mess and do I resent him with every fibre of my being for making mine and Judah's lives more complicated?

Absolutely.

So what do you do with a Tuesday?  A torn trapezius, an empty bank account, a looming 25th birthday, an empty bed, empty cupboards, a 7 month old on an antibiotic, a demanding, poor paying job, and an approaching court date?

What do I do with the lack of hope in my heart for this prayer that remains on the tip of my tongue?  

Because Don said it best.  I just want someone to watch TV before bed with.  Someone to say goodnight to.  Someone to make dinner for.  Someone, during weeks like this, who will be a source of quiet strength.  Someone to defend me when I feel like I'm in this corner alone.  Someone to protect Judah and me when it feels like the world's crashing in.  Someone who misses us.

But there's an honest, raw, part of me which truly does not believe it will ever happen.

So I stretch this torn muscle.  Sign the paperwork.  Make the phone calls.  Rock my sweet little boy.  And consider the lilies.

Just hoping, praying, with everything I have left that what it is we're hoping for... is just right around the corner. 

the workout

So here is what just happened. 

The childcare at my gym sucks.  My sister and I left our sons there a few months back and came back from Zumba class to crying babies left in jumperoos and a staff person grumpily cleaning up and ignoring our questions.  Kat no longer takes Elijah to the gym with her.  I have fewer options or opportunities to work out, so I complained about the bitchy staff person and tried again.  We did ok for a few weeks.  Until last week.  When the little teenage girl was confused about why I wanted Judah taken out of his carseat.  And then found me.  45 minutes into my workout.  Told me Judah had been crying the whole time I was gone and she "thinks he pooped" and I needed to come get him.  I acted a little more than upset.  Not because my workout was interrupted (mid-rep.  Only my left leg was sore the next day) but because Judah never cries.  Ever.  And certainly not for 45 minutes.  I got into the childcare room and my poor little boy was crying the hurt cry. 

Also.  He had not pooped.

So I withdrew my childcare payment from the gym and have been creatively finding time to workout ever since.  Early in the morning before going to the office.  Quickly before getting Judah from his excellent nanny.

And today.  Today I worked out on my lunch break. 

Work has been fifty shades of hell lately.  I am doing the job of three people and getting very little return.  Working non stop and doing people favors and de-escalating and recruiting and arguing and problem solving.  I could make more money probably going to work as a receptionist at a hospital.  But noooooo.  I wanted to be a social worker.  I wanted to have direct access to people.  I wanted to manage care.  Stupid idea.

Anyway.  My point is.  Today I went to the gym on my lunch break because the weather is nice and I want to get Judah early and go home and play outside. 

One of my best friends Brigid is a strength coach and lives in Washington.  The state.  Not the capital.  I wish it was DC.  She'd be closer.  But no, she lives on the Pacific side of the country and she's in love and learning about how beautiful she is and what it means to be in a relationship and work is wearing her out too.  When I hit a pretty bad self-esteem slump a few weeks ago, she sent me some workouts to try. 

I got back into strength training a few weeks ago and can already tell a marked difference in my body.  Ugh. Sometimes the solution is right in front of your face and it just looks like too much work.  But I've been down this road before and I know the benefits.  This time, it was all about making time.  It was all about trying just a little bit harder.  Pushing farther.  Finding my baseline and not looking back.

The workout Brig gave me was ten reps of five "simple" body weight exercises.  The instructions say to do 8 sets.  It was 2:15.  I needed to be done in a reasonable amount of time, and 8 sounded like a hell of a lot to me, so I thought, "I'll shoot for four".  Ten reps of five exercises, four times over. 

Before I knew it it was 2:30 and I had done all four.  I was sweating.  Heart was pounding.  And my quads and hamstrings were on fire from those damned tuck jumps.  (P.s. I dont do "jumps" normally.  I look silly.  And I don't like looking silly.)

I had some more time before I had to be back at the office, so I decided to do one more.  Five, instead of four.  That would push me over my plateau. 

I stretched for a minute and stared at the wall.  I had time.  And really there were only three sets left before I could say I had done them all.  I was over halfway.  Three is less than five. 

So I did my sixth. 

Stared suspiciously at the guy doing halfhearted stretching across the room and turned my back to him.

Eyeballed the snotty desk girl who came in to check on the aforementioned suspicious man.

Took a deep breath. 

And did my seventh.

Abs hurt.  Quads hurt.  Shoulders hurt.  Hamstrings hurt.  Ass hurt.  Heart pounded.  Face was red.

And then I did my eighth set. 

I had set out to do half.  I thought that's all I could do.  I thought, "there's no way I can complete this whole workout".  I had set my bar low.  I had miscalculated, misjudged, my own strength.  More improtantly, I had misjudged my own stamina.  My own determination. 

I will be sore tomorrow.  Muscles were torn.  Reparation hurts.  Recovery is a process.  And often in order to get stronger, we have to re-tear.  Re-stretch.  Re-visit those torn and hurt places so we can build muscle where there wasn't muscle before.


Chances are, what we think we can't endure, we are already enduring. 

Because, chances are, we're stronger than we think we are.

when healing does

It was there when I woke up this morning.

I knew it would be.  I had expected it earlier than today, but no later than. 

A great and tiny thing.  Flat, tucked under the mat.  A great weapon, tool, relinquished back to me.

As I opened the door and stooped down to get it, I heard the axe make the final chop to the tree.

And I was far away then, out of it's shadow, to listen to the mighty falling of it.  The crashing, which meant I had done what I needed to do. 

But it's not one of those hurtful things. 

Maybe, like Judah's umbillical cord, or the scab on a wound.

Separation happens when healing does. 

Still.  It was there when I woke up this morning and bless my heart, if it wasn't one of those concrete, tangible wonders He often uses to cause progress in me.

That big, unmistakable sign.  This time reminding me, Anna, you did not give up.  This was not something you walked away from.  This was not a mistake you made.  This was not your failure.  You just kept the door locked.

~

Today I had a long conversation with a parent.  I haven't been doing this long, but I can already tell you she is not here to be a foster parent.  Not because she's not qualified, not because she's not ready, not because she's not able, not because she won't finish and take placements.  But God has her here for a different reason.  To walk her through a different journey. And she's found her way to my office, I am the one who's supposed to lead the way.

Inadequate doesn't cut it. 

But she didn't want to leave, when our two hours were up.  She didn't want to go, saying that being in my presence was refreshing.  Even though we'd sat in my tiny office and talked through the hard things, the malignant things, the unhealthy things, the losses of it all and the gains, she was walking away... refreshed. 

So there it is, the new garden. 

Roots

I wonder sometimes, about growing out of things.  I have a few boxes and bags of clothes stacked in Judah's nursery, filled with clothes he's outgrown.  I look at them occasionally and wonder how he ever fit in them.  So tiny.  He's big now.  He outgrew those clothes, he will never be that small again.

I wonder sometimes, about the purpose of things.  When you come to the other side of a battle, tattered and worse for wear.  You're exhausted from the fight, but how rarely do we see the fruits of our labors in that moment?  We see dust settle.  But in those last moments, we know nothing about victory.  And we wonder... what was it all for? 

This is why I have a hard time letting go.  I want something to have purpose, meaning.  I want a reason and an explanation.  But therein lies the rub.  If something has a purpose in my life, it is harder for me to walk away. 

Until that moment. 

There is almost always a moment.  No matter how long it is in coming.  There is almost always a moment when you're standing in the new plot of land, having been told to dig a garden.  When you're standing in the shade of the towering, protective tree.  The tree, which gave you shelter for so long.  There it is, then, that you've been told to dig this garden.  To overturn soil and break apart dirt and create space for yourself. 

And you realize, to dig this garden, the tree must go. 

But the tree had served a purpose.  A good purpose.  Strong and steady and tall.  To see this tree go... means losing some constant, some comfort, which you have grown accustomed to.

But the roots are in the way of the garden.  The garden you've been told to dig.  The new plot of earth, which will be the growing place.  For new things.  For sustaining things.  A new harvest, a long time coming.

To dig the garden, the tree must go.

I am looking at this tree, though, and I know it had a purpose.  I know just what that purpose was.  And deep, deep, I know that purpose has been fulfilled.  I do not need this tree and its shade anymore.  I know, if I had the strength to remove it, we would be better off.  The garden would grow, in the space I make.  But the tree had a purpose.  And saying goodbye is hard.

Digging up roots is hard.

But we outgrow things. 

Garden

I heard it yesterday.  And I really don't know anymore what it is I am hearing, except it seems to be the only thing that makes sense.  I do believe I'd heard these words before.  Two years ago now, before any of this.  Before this part of the story happened.

Actually.  Those words may be the cause of this part of the story.

So hearing them again, I am cringing.  Holding my breath, just a little bit, because maybe that will lessen the pain.  There's a motion to the making room.  Gestures, of sweeping and digging and a deep hollowing out.  If there is anything in my life, which has required courage out of me, it has been this.  This creating space.

The analogy of garden helps tremendously.  I forgot about this picture, until just now.  As I was re-reading this words.  These words I've dug up, from last time.  We might call these words, good intentions, or best laid plans.  You might even say I've failed miserably.  I might agree. 

But I've come to find, in the failure, something else entirely.  I don't even have a name for it, this something else.  But one thing I know, if nothing else, is the one way to defeat fear is to give it a face.  Give it a name, this fearful thing.  Dig your heels in and stare at its face until you memorize.  Until you see it for what it really is -- this shadow, pretending to be a monster.

When I wrote about situational awareness last time, I was in a very different place.  I had come to the end of a harvest season.  It was time to quit.  To lay down the hoe and the seeds and the wheel barrow.  I didn't know I'd never pick them back up. 

I had no way of knowing the discouragement, which would follow.  How empty I would feel, and how useless during a season of "rest".  I had intended to make room and as the water spilled out, I was terrified by the emptiness of it.  I remember spending a month of silence in the car, shortly thereafter.  No radio. 

Waiting to hear.  And never did.

It's been almost two years.

And now I have Judah. 

I never went back to that garden. 

I don't think I ever will. 

So the struggle remains, to find a new garden.  I let my little plot of earth rest, laid down my tools, with every intention of coming back.  But I was drawn away.  Others came behind me and made sense of the mess, brought a harvest from the soil I suppose.  Maybe I'd done the tilling, the seed planting, and was just not meant to reap the harvest. 

But maybe.  Maybe that's what I heard yesterday.  Maybe, when I heard "make room" He was telling me to clear some space.  To stop, where I am, and overhaul.  Clear the trees.  The brush.  And start digging again. 

My stomach hurts just thinking about it.  But maybe.  Maybe the process has begun already.  Maybe I've made more progress than I thought.  Maybe.  Maybe all this hard work, all this pain, this exhaustion... hasn't been wasted. 

Sunday Dinner

Sunday Night Dinner:

Yesterday was a pretty awful day.  It was raining outside, confrontation was at a record high, loneliness was higher.  Sundays are like that.  You're dreading Monday.  And there's a certain nostalgia associated with Sundays... as a child you think its natural.  That's just how Sundays are... but it's not.  That's not true.  Just like a lot of things we believe as small children.  There's effort there.

So yesterday I cooked.

Just for me.  Which is the sad part.  But I was bound and determined to eat at least one good meal, and enjoy it.

I used the crock pot again.

2 unthawed chicken breasts
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 package of stuffing mix
1/2 cup fat free sour cream

The chicken breasts go on the bottom of the pot, covered in the stuffing mix, and then covered with the sour cream and soup mix.  Next time I will cover the chicken breasts in some seasonings (probably garlic, pepper, maybe something for a little kick...

This casserole simmered on low for three hours, which cooked the chicken all the way through.  If I had had more time, I would have left the meal in the pot for another hour to make sure the chicken was more tender.  This dish turned out moist and fluffy.

I also made brussell sprouts.  I know you think you hate them.  I don't know how you've tried them... but you've never had them like this.

I halved each sprout so it was bite sized. Seared the sprouts and a handful of almonds (may use pecans or walnuts next time, almonds tend to burn) in a pan with olive oil.  Then I drizzled honey over the sprouts, cooking until the honey caramelized some.  Then I added just a little bit more honey, took the sprouts off the heat, and added feta cheese.  The heat from the sprouts melted the cheese and the honey sweetened the whole concoction, with the nuts giving it some texture and added flavor.

Finally, though, I made beer bread.  Coming from a family of bread makers, anything that was not a Vaughan family recipe usually is not up to par.  But I didn't inherit one of the bread makers, and I wanted bread.  Not biscuits.  Not rolls from a tin pan.  I wanted homemade bread.  So once again, I turned to Pinterest.  And found a recipe for a honey beer bread.  I happened to have one Heineken left over from when Mary visited months ago, so all I had to do was buy a bag of bread flour.

The recipe is so simple.  3 cups of flour (2 all purpose, 1 bread), 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tbsp white sugar, 3 tbsp honey, a pinch of salt.... 12 oz of beer.  4 tbsp of melted butter poured over top of the loaf.  Baked at 350 for 50 minutes.  It was, hands down, the best bread I've had that wasn't a Joe Vaughan recipe.

Sometimes, what you need is a homemade meal.  Sometimes, like I told her, you just want to feel like an adult.  Skip the mismatched couches and the Ramen and eat a real homemade meal at a kitchen table.  Even if you do end up eating by yourself.

Smoothies

My friend gave me a crock pot and a blender last week.  Undoubtedly these things will change my life.

Yesterday, after a pretty intense weight training circuit at the gym, I came home and made a smoothie from a recipe I'd found on Pinterest.

Sometimes thing aren't complicated.  And those simplicities deserve some attention.

Here is the recipe.  I may change a few things next time, as the oatmeal left a chalky aftertaste.

I am at the point in my life where a strict, weight loss diet is neither desirable or logical.  I need as much energy as I can get.  And I am not unhappy with the dimensions of my body.  The shape, well, that's a different story.  But no crash diets for this mama.

My biggest struggle is not having time to eat real meals.  I love to cook and (when I have the time) am great at it.  But there never seems to be time.  The blender and the crock pot have already effectively changed that. Not to mention sparked a level of culinary creativity in me.

Hopefully over the next few weeks, I'll set some concrete goals, and you will get to join me on a journey of health and experimentation.

Defy

One thing I realized lately was this lie I'd let myself believe.  The key to defeating a lie is recognizing for what it is, whether you understand the root of it or not.  Just call it a lie.  Call it by its name. 

I woke up the other morning in an apartment.  The second floor apartment with mismatched couches and non-white, colorless walls.  And I realized I had led myself to believe it had to be this way.  To be "content" because things couldn't get better. 

Now.  I suppose there's something to be said about being "content whatever the circumstances", or whatever Apostle Paul said.  I don't like Paul particularly, and if he were here, I'd tell him so.  (He'd probably say, you know, Anna, I don't particularly like you either)  But I bet every once in a while he woke up and did not like his surroundings either.

Small efforts can quickly add up to small changes. 

And small changes, if they're just right, can build into large changes.  As scary as change can be, sometimes that's exactly what you need.  Increments of change, small goals toward the accomplishment of the big goal.

I said it, really just wanting to get off the other topic.  But I control the conversation.  We don't talk about what I don't want to talk about.  But this morning, I wanted her to express that what seemed to be wrong, wasn't really it.  What's wrong is: I have compartmentalized my life.  And each compartment has effectively bled into the other.  I cannot find the end of the knotted string, but the mess is driving me insane.  There is guilt, with no source.  And a sense of un-accomplishment, deriving from a deep-seeded lie about contentment.  A hectic pace, leading to a lack of time, resulting in a damaged self esteem and deflated hope and fizzled creativity.

I'm trying to sort multi-colored marbles.  And I haven't pulled one out, because there are equal amounts of all four colors, and I don't know what to start with.  Seemingly simple.  Trivial.  But a decision to get started, and I can't get started until the decision is made. 

I started, without realizing it, a few weeks ago when I organized Judah's room.  And when I sold my clothes at the consignment store. 

Every time I hang a picture, I make progress. 

I defy the lie.

Every time I take the time to hang my clothes. 

Every time I make a meal.

Every time I enjoy a whole cup of coffee.

Every time I learn something new.

The lie is defied.

So we talked about a pyramid.  Basic concrete goals, as the foundation.  Building, as I make the next right moves, the next best decisions, until I am able to obtain the more abstract, seemingly unattainable ones.  The top.  When it starts all over again. 

We talked about grad school, and the lie that higher education is not an option for me.  We talked about buying house, and how that may not be quite as scary as some people pretend it is.  Except.  It scares me for different reasons.

And I told her about the couch. 

About the desperate need for something to be proud of -- something tangible.  About how you walk into my second story apartment now and there is a homemade entertainment center my granddaddy made.  And two, brown leather couches that match.  There are new frames on the wall. A new spice rack in the kitchen.

None of which cost me much at all.  Little red clearance stickers.  Stuff pulled from forgotten boxes.  Secondhand, made beautiful, unique.  And the lie is defied. 

It's the simple things, really.  Actively defying the lie that things will not get better than this.  To settle into a state of contentment, so deep I don't strive.  Settling for how things are.  Instead of making room for growth, allowing for change, changing your position so you can change your perspective.

I'm hoping this train of thought trickles down into another area of my life.  But I'm not ready to follow it there yet. 

Congruency

The problem is, I keep trying to be creative.  I want the words to look nice, sound nice, feel nice.  I want you to enjoy reading the words, even if they mean something awful.  Even if I am only writing to tell you about laundry, damn it I want you to want to read about laundry.

That sounded terribly co-dependent and I apologize.  But it's what came out.  I will deal with it later, after I deal with this silly little desire to write well, instead of write something.

I'm trying to get it together.  My life, that is.  I live in a two bedroom apartment with my six month old son (who happens to be the size of a twelve month old), my almost 20-year old sister who sleeps on the fold out couch, and Vincent: the albino Beta fish Aunt Liv has kept alive for going on a month now.

The Christmas tree box sits in my psuedo dining room, next to the carseat Judah outgrew months ago.  The couches are mismatched, but I own the most comfortable arm chair ever from Goodwill.  I rarely hang up my clothes anymore, because I don't have time.  There are alwas at least three laundry baskets, full of dirty clothes, and a sinkful of dishes and bottles.

Lately, I've been trying to get it together.  I came up with the best way to organize all of Judah's clothes, getting them out of laundry baskets.  I boxed up all his small clothes he's grown out of, the many pairs of shoes his feet never fit in, and they are stacked against the wall.  I cannot bring myself to give them away. 

Last month I bought a lot of books.  Cheap.  For a few pennies on Amazon.  The only one I've finished is: The Fault in Our Stars.  Which is in no way an intellectual book; it did not increase my vocabulary or teach me to think critically.  But I couldn't put it down.  I enjoyed reading the words.  They felt nice.  Even the ones that felt awful.

The other books are gathering dust on the shelves.  Not because I don't want to read them, but because I don't want to dust.  And by the time Judah falls asleep at night, it's all I can do to keep my eyes open during an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  But there are books by Anne Lammot.  Slaughterhouse Five is sitting on my shelf.  My therapist recommended a book, which is sitting on my kitchen table, because I meant to read it.  Then I forgot to.

I was given a crock pot and a blender last night.  I am more excited about these two appliances than anything in a long while.  I have spent most of my lunch breaks the past few days exploring the archives for smoothie recipes, and crock pot meals so I can actually eat at night.  I'm not really interested in going on a diet -- I am too realistic for all that crap.  But eating regularly would be nice.  Something other than break and bake cookies and wheat saltines.

My work pays for a gym membership for me.  I get over there a couple of times a week, leave Judah in the childcare with some rather snarky teenage girls, and workout for about an hour.  I feel guilty every time I do, even though I know it's a misplaced emotion.  I pick him up from daycare and drop him off at childcare and think... surely he knows I'm coming back.  I lost all the baby weight by November of last year, but pregnancy changes your entire shape.  I am currently a shape I don't particularly care for, let alone anyone else.  But pregnancy -- baby -- also makes your body resistant to more change.  As if it's saying, "hold on.  The last time you had an idea, we were pretty uncomfortable for almost ten months.  Your ideas are bad." But I am working hard.  Setting small goals.  Attending zumba on Saturday mornings, which is more of an exercise in humility than cardio.  If the only thing I learn in 2013 is how to laugh at myself, I think I'll have accomplished a great deal.

Judah has started eating solids.  My sister taught me how to make homemade baby food a few weekends ago, and while I cannot do this at my own house, he is still eating on banana puree and plums.  I bought avacodos yesterday, after days of looking for ripe ones.  There's something I love about the idea of teaching Judah to eat many different kinds of foods early on.  Just the other day he started eating Cheerios for the first time.  He hasn't quite figured out the fine motor skill of finger to thumb... but grabs the food with his palm and brings his whole hand to his face.  The little things he learns on a daily basis are truly a miracle.  Every once in a while I get a glimpse of him as a four year old, of him as a teenager, and my mind is blown. All because of Cheerios. 

I sat in on a Citizen's Review Panel last Friday and was reminded of my commitment to advocacy.  Job searching may be my least favorite thing to do.  But I know I need to explore my options.  Sitting in on the brainstorming session, the social think tank, my mind was blown at the power of connection.  The networking of key players.  What blew my mind even more was that as I sat at the table in the school library, was that I was considered one of those players.

My friends have been telling me to take my own advice.  God opened my mind and heart a few weekends ago, after a week of feeling utterly hopeless and defeated.  I was sure no man in his right mind would willingly choose my little family.  No one would look at our situation and pick us. No good, responsible, kind, mature man, that is.  Which was when God reminded me, "Anna, how many good, responsible, kind, mature men do you know?" His gentle prodding led me to realize how young the men in my world are.  And God began to build a picture in my head.  Allowing a little bit of hope to grow.  Now that doesn't mean I'm going to join Match.com today.  I don't think. 

I am inheriting an entertainment center my granddaddy made. It's been sitting in my youngest uncle's garage and I've been trying to get it to my place for months now.  That might actually happen this week... this fire I have lit under my tail is really getting stuff done.  Even if all the "stuff" doesn't seem congruent, or is missing the corner pieces.  I am going to try and make my own headboard.  My bed has a basic, metal frame from American Freight that cost me $27 last summer.  There are pictures hanging above it that I reguarly hit my head on.  So I have found a place that sells burlap coffee bean bags.  I'm going to buy plywood and batting and borrow a staple gun and pretend I'm Martha Stewart. And make a freakin headboard.  I also have friends who renovated their house and have window frames in their basement.  They've given me permission to steal these and I'm researching now the different ways to use them to decorate.

I may live in a small two bedroom apartment with no washer or dryer and no more storage space, but I am tired of feeling like I live in a dorm.  Last week I broke down and realized I felt like all my houses for the past seven years have been temporary.  Seven years.  No permanency, no stability, no sense of home.  And if there's one thing I want to provide for my son, it's that.  A sense of belonging, of shared, lived-in space.  A home should reflect the people living in it.  And I may not be the most exciting woman in the world.  But surely I'm more interesting than the colorless walls. 

It just feels like a complicated puzzle.  Trying to get all the pieces to fit right.  I want to feel like I have it together.  Like I have a flat stomach and a strong butt and clear skin and no dead ends.  Like my clothes match and I know how to be a good mom.  I want to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation, be the sort of woman people come to for company and advice and comfort.  I want people to see grace in me, not hatefulness. 

And there's the progression.  There's the thing you cannot see. 

Because the whole time I've been trying to fix the outside, I'm trying even harder to fix the inside. I have tried to be patient and I have tried to be wise and kind.  I don't want to be admired for my home.  But for how people feel when they are in my home. 

There is something to be said for congruency, however.  And right now this is what I crave.  For the outside to match the inside.  For the results of years of hard work, of prayer, of struggle, of torn muscles and repaired wounds to finally make some sense.  For seamlessness. 

Not perfection.  I am one scarred, bruised, battered individual.  Even the healed places aren't smooth anymore. 

But I want what people know, what they see, and what they feel... to be the same. 

I want my mind to be stimulated.  I want to smell nice things, see nice things, feel nice things, taste nice things.  I want Judah to learn to crawl, then walk, and talk.  I want him to grow up knowing the importance of the inside being even more beautiful, more handsome, better than the outside.  But to have the peace, which comes from the congruency.

This has nothing to do with expensive things.  New things.  Nothing to do with money, nothing to do with what we can and cannot afford.  It has to do with the creative spirits we were given.  End of story. 

It has to do with telling a better story.  Being the kind of protagonist the reader falls in love with.

Apology

I'm sorry.

The words echo in my ears and I say them, repeatedly, knowing he doesn't know what they mean yet.

Unfortunately the reality of this world is that "I'm sorry" is often said and not meant, or never said when it should be.

And just six months into his little life, I already find myself begging his forgiveness.

Some stories don't need to be told.

But today marks the day of redirection.  A day, I can only pray, is a milestone.  That from this day forward, we only learn how to do better.  Just he and I.

I pray one day he will accept my apology, especially for those things out of my control.  That he might trust my judgement and be confident in my unconditional love for him.

And that one day I'd forgive myself and find someone to teach him how to shoot a basketball and lift the heavy things in our house.

The Dove Story

I have strep throat.  Fever, chills, swollen throat.  It feels like I'm swallowing nails and my head is in someone's vice grip.  I don't get sick.  Rarely, anyway.  And when I do, I don't go to the doctor.  But I have a son now, I've been fighting this for a week, and the last thing I wanted to do was return to Lexington tomorrow and get Judah sick.  So, without insurance, I went to a clinic here in Elizabethtown.  Put my name and address and symptoms in a computer and waited for them to call my name.

I sat down and picked up Donald's book and read for a few minutes.  My phone vibrated and I scrolled through a few text messages and then added an appointment into my calendar.  Facebook apparently uploads all my "friend's" birthdays into my calendar and today just happens to be his birthday.  The intern from Ethiopia.  I should probably wish him a happy birthday, but I haven't seen him in three years.

Three years.

I sat in the chair in the awkward waiting area of the clinic and stared at the pharmacy ahead of me and just sank.  Sank deep into the congruence I had been seeking.  I swear.  If I don't meet God in the strangest of places...

We were in Africa on his birthday.  I can't remember what we did exactly, but I think it involved digging a foundation during the day and eating guacamole at night.  But we were in Africa.  And as sweet as he was, his birthday really doesn't mean anything to me today.

Except we were there.  In Africa.  This day.  Three years ago.  

There are quite a few of you who know the events, which led me on my journey across the world.  Everything from God speaking at traffic lights to big, stone doves, Virgin Mary in a red headdress, and windstorms.

All those things make a great story.  I can tell it now almost from an outside perspective.  Almost.  It feels like someone else lived that life.  But what still remains dangerously intimate, the memory I have which still cuts deep and moves me... is the memory of the prayer I prayed.

One prayer.

Repeatedly.  Day after day.  For months and months, I prayed a single prayer in repetition.  Persistently knocking at the throne room door.  "Hey, excuse me.  I'm here again.  Let's talk.  Yes, about that same thing.  I know you heard me yesterday, but I wanted to make it clear... this is what I'm after."

It was simply a prayer for discernment.

Three years later I am in a very different place.  And I don't know if I'll ever go back to Africa. Or what the big, stone dove and the red headdress even really meant.  But I do remember the windstorm.  The windstorm that came out of nowhere -- no rain, no thunder.  Wind in the dry season.  Waking us up and pushing the fires through the mountains and frustrating the donkeys.  Wind, telling me Jesus was as close as He could be.

And I know maybe, He wanted me to associate the dove with Him.

Not with a message.  Not with directions.  But as a reminder.  To seek Him the way I sought Him then.  To ask for discernment, perception, and insight.  To ask about risk and the wisdom to understand.

A few weeks ago, something changed in my life.  There was a glimmer of hope and I was excited.  I thought prayers were being answered and I thought... just maybe... a long prayed prayer was being answered.  I was skeptical of the "rightness" I perceived and walked around for a few days holding my breath.

Then I saw the dove.

My heart skipped a beat and I immediately assumed the wrong thing.  I immediately assumed this was God's way of giving me direction.  Of affirming something.  Like the big, flashing sign I always need to understand Him when He says "here it is!  That thing I want for you."

This, however, was not what He meant by the dove this time.  Just like it was not what He meant by the dove the first time.

It took just a few hours, I think.  Maybe twelve.  Before I heard the small voice -- like the one He used for Moses on the mountain.  The small voice, requiring me to lean in, to give Him my full attention.  So I could hear Him say, "pray the old way, Anna.  Pray the way you did then.  Just like that."

This is my gift.  At the end of the day, I have nothing but this.  And so I whispered an equally quiet prayer.  For my eyes to be opened to the risks He wanted me to take and to give me the courage to take the next step.  For discernment, perception, and insight.  Wisdom to understand.

Two weeks later, it's all done.  And I'm quite frustrated with myself for letting it go as long as it did.  The discernment came quickly, with great strength and resolve.  But I still admonish the enemy for trying to capture my son and me in our vulnerability.

Not so quietly, I remind the enemy and the world, exactly Who we belong to.  Exactly Whose wing we live under.  I am grateful too, then, that three years ago I learned how to pray this way.  A listening muscle was developed in me, and all the hurt and damage which has been done since then did not destroy it.

The wind is blowing in Elizabethtown this week.  I am back in my hotel room and I know God has met me here in an equally strong and valiant way as when He met me in east Africa.

And a truth has been built in me.

About the character of the God we love.  God, the Father, the storyteller.  Who foreshadows.  Who prepares us and equips us for battles.

March 1, 2010: I will be reaping this for the rest of my life.  

Help

I was angry.  

A year's worth of anger, fear, sadness, hurt, inadequacies, let downs, insecurities had been stockpiled in a place out of my reach.  I did it for my own good, stored it away, because I knew what I had to do.  What I had to do and how to get it done, and I knew... I knew better than to let anything else get in the way.

This week, a chapter closed.  A new one began and I step forward with as much trepidation and uncertainty as one might begin any new journey.  I have no map, no directions -- and worst of all, no one clued me into my destination.  I feel, unfortunately, quite lost.  Safe.  But lost.

And not to my surprise, these new feelings, this new path, reached high and deep and long and found the place where I kept it all.  There, on the shelf in the back of my mind.  Smelling like so much life and  of so much struggle and of all kinds of secrets.  Pretending I was capable, ready, to deal with it all, it came tumbling down.  Piled at my feet.  Mounding beside me, hot and sticky and not all bad -- but all very dangerous.

The knot grew in my chest, the tears burned behind my eyes.  Sadness welled there, and anxiety pushed at my armpits.  As if it all, all this life, was trying to find some way to escape me.  I would not let it, for whatever reason.  And I shake my head, wondering at my ability to cling to that which is no longer of use to me.

I was angry.

I didn't use to be angry.  I used to be scared and sad and remorseful and all those things you feel when you think it's all your fault.  Those things you feel when the world, when the church, has put the scarlet letter on your coat and every day conversation begins with subtle mentioning of your shortcomings.

I am able to stand here now and say a host of things I never was able to say before.  Some of you have waited for the day that I'd agree with you -- the past few years have been laden with mistakes and failures and I, myself, am full of character flaws.

And it's not that I agree.  But you're right -- in the sense we have to understand exactly where things started falling apart, to be able to ever begin putting it back together.  It's not that I agree, because I truly believe our culture -- especially the church, the helping culture -- has taught us that freedom is in admitting our flaws.  Be honest, repent, admit, they quip.  Although scripture does say "if we confess our sins He is faithful and just", it seems like most things the church has turned this practice into something it was never intended to be.

But I have grown.  In ways I was promised and in ways I'd never anticipated.  And much like the stages of grieving, I got there.  To an angry place.  Past the sad place, the lonely place, the insecure place.  Straight to the top.  To the angry place.

I don't like the angry place.  I never stay there long.  It's hot and bothersome and I can't see straight up there.  I think, perhaps, I can't breathe properly up there either.  Because I get dizzy.  "Seeing red" was a term they coined about me.  So I race to the top, have my moment of hating the world and everything in it and say lots of words, very quickly, that I earnestly mean but shouldn't have said.

Then I am done.  Back down the mountain.  I don't like staying there at the top -- I don't like being angry.  I dislike it so, I refuse to let myself feel anger for too long.  Maybe I'm not really a forgiving person, since my motive for forgiving is often selfish.  But at the end of the day, it is just true.  I don't like the angry place.

But I was angry.  

And I was pumping gas.  And words were spewing and colors were blurring.  I was staying too long there, at the top.  But I could not find my way down.

Too many unkind words.  Too many accusations.  Too many consequences.  Too many implications.  Too much advice.  Too many opinions.  Too much rejection.

It had all gotten me here.  And I couldn't find my way out.

~

This weekend I am watching a little boy we call Bear.  Judah will look like him in two years and that baffles me.  I have known Bear since before he could walk and there's a special place in my heart for this small little boy.  His mom is a single mom too, and we have vowed from day one to help each other out.  That's what we do -- look out for each other.  

This weekend, she was the one who needed help.  So I offered.  And for the past two days, I've been a mommy to two.  Judah's had a big brother and my conversations have revolved around what color Cheez-Its are and when it's time to go to the potty.  Where are your eyes, Bear?  What sound does a dinosaur make?

I live on the second story of an apartment complex.  With all of our stuff in my arms, including Judah and his carrier, Bear and I walked up to the apartment building and then inside.  I started climbing the stairs and turned around and there stood Bear, at the bottom of the steps.  He looked up at me with the big brown eyes of someone who is scared, a little person in a big, new place.  

"Help?" He whispered, staring at the steep, carpeted staircase.  

I had forgotten he was little.  

I had forgotten that he was little and needed help still.

I walked back down the steps and Bear grabbed my free pinky finger and we took the staircase one step at a time until we reached the top.

~

I was angry.  

The gasp pump filled my tank and I replaced the nozzle and walked inside the Speedway to buy coffee.  

And somewhere, between the pump and the door, I asked for help.

Plain and simple.  It was cold and my hands smelled like gasoline and I was still seeing colors every time I took a breath.  I was still hurt in such a deep way that it didn't cause me pain anymore, it just kept me there, at the top in the place I didn't want to stay.

And somewhere, between the pump and the door, I just whispered "I don't want to be angry anymore."

I took a deep breath and January filled my lungs and I breathed out -- and maybe that's when it happened.  

I'll never know.  Not for certain anyway.  Whether it was my own will or the advocate, the Spirit, who breathed a sigh of relief and petitioned for me.  "She just asked for help!  I heard her!  Not in so many words, but yes, I know my Anna and that was it.  That was what we've been waiting for, Father.  She asked, let's help her."

Because by the time I got back to my car, the anger was gone.

And I was walking serenely back down the mountain, back to where I wanted to be.  

~

"Help" is such a scary word.  It means we cannot do this thing, whatever it is, on our own.  The word interprets inability as inadequate.

But would you ever look at a child who can't climb the stairs on his own and call him inadequate?  He is incapable.  He cannot do this big, steep, scary thing on his own.  And he told you so. Because he knows.  He knows he can't.  He told you, because he needs help.  This, this act of young bravery, this act of honesty, that one small word that the world teaches grownups we can't use... is all confession ever was intended to be.

Help, we should cry.  Every time the sorrow and the sin and the hurt and the hatred has tried to bury us alive.  Help, we should cry.  Every time we get to the place we hate and cannot find our way back down.

Help.  Not in our inadequacies, but in our inabilities.  Help, we cry, not asking for judgement or to be reprimanded or to be isolated.  But we cry help because this thing, this thing we need to do, we cannot do on our own.  

Sometimes, though you may not want to admit the demons are real, we are plagued by them.  We are attacked by them.  The voice, sounding so much like our own, like our fathers, like that boy you loved, breathing that fear and anger and hurt into your lungs.  

Sometimes, their literal or metaphorical tactics are to cover our ears and make us think we are battling this alone.  That the pile of hurts and memories and smelly stuff now laying at your feet, is a pile you have to sort through alone.  

Or that staircase you have to climb, that steep staircase, is one you have to climb by yourself.  

My friend, it is not.

And my prayer is that we would grow to be a community, we'd find ourselves living in a world, where it is not just the young who are willing to whisper "help". We'd find ourselves living in a world, a community, where we respond to the request, the confession, the plea, with nothing but grace and a free pinky.  

Able

1.13.13

There's a host of hurts we come across
None of which alike
From the air inside the birthing room
To the darkness where we die
Though I feel I'm just as strong as any man I know
I'm not able on my own

Carry round the secrets
Only heaven knows
Crawl into our darkened rooms where only victims go
Though I feel I'm strong enough to carry all this load
I'm not able on my own

(Needtobreathe - Able)

And so we find ourselves here, a year later.  The words find my ears and I am startled -- unexpected and out of place and painfully familiar.  Voice carries note and meaning and memory all the way to my ears.  And if I hadn't before, I now feel as though I've lived an entire year in twenty four hours.  

I have buried emotions deep enough, I may recall them but I can avoid feeling the pain again.  Of sitting on the floor and asking something impossible of God.  Of sitting in the doctor's office, twice, not even having words for my questions.  Of calling him, meeting him at his house, sitting on the bed and all the start of all the confusion.  Of the pain and judgement and nausea and fear that followed.  

Fear, it seems, often leads us into the next chapter of our stories.  Whether or not we let fear control our lives determines the nature and quality of that next chapter.  And I, despite the temptation, did not succumb.  

But I am haunted -- haunted by waters full of memories and intensity and the way the rain smelled that morning. Haunted by the remembering, of sitting on an unfamiliar street and staring at traffic in my parked car.  When the a strain of music caught my ear and He told me what I needed to hear.  Not on my own.

How often do we stand neck deep in life.  Armpits aching with the nervousness of it all.  We can't see far enough ahead.  We cannot fathom how our prayers might be answered.  We think we know best -- an alternative is out of the question.  We beg and cry and take deep breaths and somehow, we collect days.  Somehow we make it to sundown every time.  And our beds swallow us and we resolve to do it again.

Somehow, we think.  Somehow we will do this.  Even if some of those days our eyes are squinted shut and some days we finish rather worse for wear.  The days add up.  The hours pass.  

Then one day you wake up and it is one year later.  Somehow, though we couldn't tell you how, we've made it here.  And though the world thinks this is an unremarkable day, it's implications wake you up in the morning.  You know.  You know what this day means.

In not so many words, today means you survived.  You arrived today, as a conquerer.  

The Story of 2012

I just spent New Year's Eve sick and laying in bed.  

Larry and Emily took Judah for me so I spent the last few hours of 2012 completely alone.

It's the first morning of the new year and it's still dark outside and I miss my boy terribly.  But I am enjoying the quiet for just a little while longer, trying to reclaim the sentimentality of this holiday, the reflection, which always accompanies the turn of a new year.  

New Year's Eve is always about this: the looking back, the preparing.  A milestone so we remember where we've come from, and if we need to, take a deep breath and change direction.  

Life, my life, has a funny of way of foreshadowing.  

On December 31, 2011 I wrote :  But that happens sometimes.  Sometimes we try things and we fail.  We have good intentions and we mean well.  And we have no way of knowing what's coming our way.  No way to really prepare for the battles we are going to fight.  To predict the ways we are going to turn.

Thirteen days into the new year I found out I was pregnant.  I went out the night before to enjoy some time with girlfriends and had taken a cheap pregnancy test before going.  The test was faulty, partially indicating "pregnant" -- blurry, incomplete, not enough for me to be concerned. 

This, it turns out, would be the story of 2012.  The plot line that would move my story forward.

Very few of you know this entire story.  Frankly because some stories are not written to be told.  But this chapter of my life built my character, tested my faith, and strengthened me in ways I never could have anticipated.  

I think back to the beginning of last year and I am queasy just at the thought.  I think about snowy nights at Horseman's Lane and dark nights on Woodland Avenue.  I think about walking to class in the snow, fighting morning sickness.  Leaving my research class with Dr. Royse to throw up for the first time in the janitors bathroom of the basement in POT.  

I think about round ligament pain while working at Orange Leaf, taking my break to drive to Jamba Juice, because nothing else would stay down.  About eating whole sleeves of wheat saltines and falling asleep the moment I laid my head to the pillow.  I remember the nightmares and wish I did not. 

I remember the worst semester of my college career.  Classes taught by PhD students and ungracious hippies and demanding social workers from Ghana.  I remember UK winning the national championship.  Sitting on the steps of my studio apartment listening to the wild parties because I could not participate.

I am almost physically uncomfortable remembering this season of my life.  

On April 19th I found out I was having a little baby boy.  Judah Nathaniel.  He was already named.  God had told me he was a boy -- and given me a name.  I found out I was having a little boy just two days after Katherine and David found out they were too.  A generation of girls, giving birth to a generation of boys.  

I also found out that Judah had a calcium deposit on his little heart.  And I prayed the boldest, most trusting prayer I've ever prayed.   Only to have God answer me with that peace that transcends all understanding.

In May I moved out of my studio apartment and spent the months of May and June technically homeless.  I slept on Nubia's futon.  Got a job at a daycare.  Sat in the truck with him and finally learned a truth that would still, today, impact my life.  

In May I also started a practicum at NECCO.  A Private Child Caring Agency.  I came to intern with them for what I thought would be a summer placement.  I took trips to the detention center and sat in on intakes and multiple times almost threw up in my supervisor's vehicle while driving down the interstate.  I became a social worker -- if not in credentials, in mentality.

And at the end of June I moved back to Redding Road after twenty some odd years.  Larry calls us homing pigeons, always returning home.  

In July, I saw my son's face for the first time.  We were checking on the EIF in his heart, and because there were so few patients in the office that day, the US tech gave me a free 3D ultrasound.  So many people would tell me that these 3D ultrasounds were not a strong indicator of what babies would actually look like once they're born.  But they were wrong.  That day the US told me my son was healthy and whole.  And to this day, I watch Judah make the same faces he did while he was in the womb.  

In August Mary and Jamere got married.  I was part of their story from day one -- the late night in the club when Mary texted me and joked about this "baby" she'd met.  Not even a year later, they'd be married.  My only regret is I didn't dance at their wedding.

In August I was also hired on at NECCO, my practicum placement, as a part time home resource assistant.  Without an interview, I laid my resume on the Program Director's desk and was hired the next day.  Making it possible for me to quit my jobs at Orange Leaf and Crestwood and put myself in position for a promotion.  

I also started my last semester of college.  Walking into class and sitting sideways in the desk because my belly was too big to fit.  

I bought a new car -- trading my Ford Focus in for a Corolla.  My second investment as a mother.

On September 1st Elijah David Rector was born.  The first son, first grandson, first great-grandson, first great-nephew.  My first nephew.  He was born with a thick head of hair and amazed us at the way he grew cuter every day.  

On September 12th 2012, on Olivia's 19th birthday, I was admitted to Central Baptist Hospital to be induced.  Judah was comfortable and didn't want to come on his own.  I was miserable.  Feet were swollen, PUPPPS in full effect.  I drove myself to the hospital.  Registered in a private room.

And on September 13th at 6:05pm, fifteen hours of labor and one hour of pushing, Judah Nathaniel was born.  8 lbs 5 oz and 21 1/2 inches long. 

This, he, was the story of 2012.  

He is almost four months old now and it has been the longest and shortest four months of my life.  Those hard battles, which I had foreshadowed in 2011, continue to be fought.  

On December 14th, I graduated from University of Kentucky with a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work.  Against all odds, I am now done.  Anna Vaughan, BASW.

So much heartbreak has continued to happen.  I have never asked God "why" so many times in my life.  Never felt so hopeless, so excited, so terrified, so inadequate. 

As the new year rolls over I am still laying in bed recovering from the stomach flu. Larry has Judah and I am alone.  This week... this week ahead means more than last night ever could have.  




This week means closure.  This week is a greatest expression of all the grace I have left.  This week is an anniversary.  This week is a promotion.  This week has already been hard conversations and certain levels of hurt.  So much thinking as the new year approached.  I can't even get my mind to a place where I can make any plans.  I don't even know what I want for this next year.  Except for peace and progress.















I am so thankful.  I am thankful for him for staying when he didn't have to.  For loving my son.  For being my big man, who in so many ways, has fixed so many things in my heart and in our lives.  


I am so thankful for Olivia -- Judah's Aunt Liv.  Who moved into my living room in September and never left.   

I am so thankful for those who have walked me through  2012.  Who have listened to my crying, who have put up with the horrible drama, who have fed me, and clothed Judah.  Who have taken out my trash and taken me out.  I am so thankful for those loved me enough to include me.  

I am so thankful for those people who still look like Jesus.

And I am thankful for those who haven't given up on me.  Who know the Father and the Spirit well enough to still see them in me.  

 As the New Year starts, I can't help but think about him.  And hope that, even though he is not involved, his life would be blessed and impacted one day.  That the hurt he caused would heal and his place would be taken.  But mostly that one day, he would look back and not be hurt by his mistakes, but encouraged by our grace.  

And so, as always, my New Year's resolution is to "do better".  It's just that the things I need to "do better" at this year are different than ever before.

This year, I hope I am a better mother.  A better friend.  I hope the work I do on a daily basis helps better the lives of forgotten children.  I hope when people look at my life, they see a better picture of Jesus.  

I hope to do better at balancing.  To find ways to contribute, to stretch myself, to love the people in my life better.  I hope to learn to be more gracious, more patient, more understanding.  I hope I am a better friend.

I hope to stand up for myself and my son and be brave enough to walk away from the things that hurt us.  

I hope I remember how to risk and to listen.  

I hope I get answers.  I hope I get closure.  I hope we find freedom in being and loving the way we were created to.  

I hope I keep learning.

And that at the end of this year, I hope I have a new story to tell. 

I hope.