Seized by Hope

She is Strong

"Strong...She lives with intention.  She fights for what matters.  She makes each day her own."  

                                                                                                                                                      M.H. Clark

As I write today I am curious about why it is that two days in a row the prompt from the book on friendship I am reading daily led me to write about my girls.  I don't think that is coincidental.

Katy's strength is breathtaking to me.

It shows up in her strong and grounded sense of who she is and what is her truth.

She has been intentional about her life from early in her teens.  The fight inside of her seen first as subtle, quiet determination in school, that grew to mark how she works, how she cares for those she loves and how she purposes to move forward in her life.

Katy's fight is passionate and most of the time it shows itself as a sweet drawing towards her that occurs because she loves from such a deep place inside of her heart.  

Her strength is lovely, creative and courageous; it's playful and inviting and I love watching her move about in her world as a strong woman.

Here's to my brave, strong girl.

Joyful

"She embraces life.  She has a habit of saying yes to big chances, bold choices and good things."  M.H. Clark

I wasn't sure whether I would write about girls as part of this friend posting extravaganza.  However, when I read this quote there was no other face but Allison's that came to my mind.

My creative, sassy, eclectic, gorgeous, living large, speaking her heart, loving boldly girl.

A long time ago I spoke to Allison about her relationship with joy.  She is has such a joyful soul and it seems that when evil comes for her it always comes for joy.  She has to choose to fight against what would take her down and snuff the candle of joy in her heart.

I love her.

Here a few pictures of why....

Pure Joy to have her as my girl.

Shelly

"What is a friend?  She's someone you look forward to seeing."  M.H. Clark

Fifteen years ago I met Shelly at another friends birthday dinner.  The connection was immediate...in fact I put wet clothes in her dryer that night because the temporary house we were staying in didn't have a working clothes dryer.

It was the beginning of something so good.

A blog post cannot do honor to who Shelly is in my life or to the depth our shared love or to the rugged road we have walked together as women, friends, wives and mothers.

Shelly's face is always one I look forward to seeing, her signature smile provokes a warmth inside of my soul that speaks, "All is well."

I've seen her face waiting for me in airports, walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, in dressing rooms while we shop, across the aisle at church, over large plates of nachos, and one day in the delivery room when her's was the first face to smile and offer me some hope that my baby girl would be ok.

Such goodness to have a friend that I so look forward to seeing.

I am grateful.

Bright

"She keeps her spirit open, she looks forward to tomorrow, she believes in her potential."

It is both easy and impossible to write about Kim.  

Easy...

She is fun, energetic, generous, creative, gift giving, inclusive, inviting, always willing to try something new...food, exercise, wine, books, music, nutrition, bible study, clothes, cars....whatever...she's in.

Impossible..

Kim is a mystery, deep, unique, surprising, ever changing and ever the same, curious, secluded, isolating, quiet...she is both knowable and unknowable, consistent and unpredictable.

Kim is unique in my circle of friends.  In truth she transcends friendship and falls in the realm of family.  She is a sister or a sister in law, a dear part of my family.

To my little girls she is 'Miss Kim"

Miss Kim who comes to visit often

Miss Kim who makes buttermilk pies for Thanksgiving

Miss Kim who has the MOST amazing hats

Miss Kim who has hopeful, exciting, inspiring, knowing things to say to them.

 

To my original three she is Kim...

Everything that is San Antonio

Filled with laughter

Silly

Russ's wife

Jacob and Reyn's Mom

Loving

Curious

Funny

Always so glad to see them and hug them tight

To me she is my friend who is always learning and anxious to share her new knowledge.

She is forward looking, while actively resisting the pull to be drawn into the past and get stuck.

She is hopeful and speaks about what she wants and what has been bright in her day.

She loves everyone she meets...everyone.  Strangers at the gym, old ladies in the Swiss Alps and odd people at Starbucks.

She is life and joy.

She is  bright.

She is my friend for life. 

Genuine Friend

"She is just exactly like nothing the world has ever seen before..."  M.H. Clark

I grew up largely, because there was LOTS of moving in my childhood, in Phoenix, Arizona.  A big part of that growing up was the church my family attended...I mean totally attended as in Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday nights and any other time the doors were open.

I met Jamie when she was 1 or 2 and I was 10 or 11.  I worked in the nursery sometimes and Jamie was in there...because her parents attended church like my parents did!

Because of the wild goodness of God many years and miles later Jamie and I re-connected.  Mark and I were living in Texas and Jamie's brother was in our young adult group at the church where Mark was on staff.

A new friendship was slowly formed, one between two grown women.

 

In the past 14 years I have come to love Jamie wildly and deeply.

She is courageous, hilarious...I mean really hilarious, intuitive, generous, honest...like the kind of honest that makes you laugh out loud, spit our your food and say, "oh my gosh..."

She is one of my very most favorite people ever.

And, we rarely see each other, but when we do the conversation picks up right where it left off and the goodness is so sweet that I leave with hungry anticipation for the next time I will get to be with her.

She's a business woman with a huge heart.

A mom who is loving her children, all of them, with creativity, joy and depth.

A wife who gives from the depth of her being.

A friend who is lavish and loving.

A few nights ago we had a sweet exchange via text message, the kind you have with a friend you've known for 40 years...seriously, that is such a very long time.

Today a box arrived in the mail and I opened it to find a gift from Jamie.  It was an expression of what can't be right now with 2000 miles separating us, and a gift from her heart that knows me well and sent something honoring of my reality.

 Who does that?  Who finds a bottle wine from a winery in Napa Valley called "Grieve".  (she also sent an amazing bottle of Stag's Leap Cab...because she is that awesome).

She is exactly like nothing the world has ever seen before....and she's my friend.

What is a Friend

This month Red Tent Living is looking at the word "Friend?" as its theme.  I've been considering how I will engage that word for my own writing.  Recently I found a book on friendship by M.H. Clark and bought it hoping to stir some things for my writing.  I've decided to try and write something each day...a bold step given how difficult it has been for me to find my words for this blog in the past several months.  We shall see how it goes.

Here is my first entry:

"What is a friend?  She's someone you can count on.  She's someone you look forward to.  She's simply wonderful, but she's brilliantly complex.  And she makes a difference in the world around her, every single day.  She's always truly, beautifully, utterly herself, and that is very good thing."  M.H Clark

Today this quote brings Jennifer's face to my mind.  

Our friendship is a blessing and a joy.  Our little girls are like 4 peas in a pod.  

She has been a breath of fresh air in the space of mothering my littles and feeling the absence of a soul connection with another mom in that with me.  

Her presence creates space for me to breath and be myself.  She invites me to dream big, believe even bigger and open my arms to receive God's lavish love.

She's passionate about breaking the silence for the abused and fights for those who need someone strong on their side .   

She's clearly accomplished, and she is also creative, artistic and complex.

She's generous, funny, brilliant, beautiful and pure joy.

Her heart is large and welcoming and believes in miracles.

She's my friend and I am so grateful, no questions there at all.

 

Ellyse Faith is Nine

It's July 28th and Ellyse Faith is nine.

My eyes are tearful as I type, after reading back through my entries about Elly and her birthday.  I started this blog the year Elly turned one.  That year I wrote,

"It's July 28th and E is one.  I've made it through the year I wasn't sure I could handle.  I've done more than handle it, I've actually been present most of the time in ways that have let me bathe in some really beautiful moments."

There are a couple of themes to my writing about Elly on her birthday.  My awareness of how her presence is tied to my understanding of faith, my limitations and God's wildness.  Her unchanging soul, which from the earliest days was sweet, joyful and wild like the wind.

I love that I have written about her nearly every year on her birthday.

Last night she found me after work, sitting in a chair trying to relax and unwind a bit at the end of the day.  "Mom, I've been waiting for you....Libby says I won't be nine until midnight tomorrow.  I KNOW that's not true.  I will be nine at the exact minute I was born.  I need my REAL birth certificate so I can show her when I am actually nine!"

Elly is nine and rarely is she ever called Ellyse.

Elly is nine and it has been another year that I could say I have made it through things I didn't think I could handle.  (most of them not about Elly at all.)

Elly is nine and I am waking up at home on her birthday for the first time in three years but Miss Elly is not home...spending the night someplace special last night in celebration of her ninth birthday.

Elly is nine and she is still the wind and still wild.  Last month she "flew" higher than ever before, quite literally.

Elly is nine and her responses to life are still so sweet and hopeful.  The day Katy told her that Aaron had called off the wedding she gave Elly the tiara that was to be her wedding gift for Elly to wear as the flower girl.  She put that tiara on and has worn it nearly every day since, because as we all know a tiara goes with every outfit.  Her words to me later were, "I just don't get it. Why doesn't Aaron want to marry Katy, there no one better than Katy, and he promised."  (All said as she sat there with her tiara sparkling on top of her curly brown hair.)

Elly is nine and she loves barbies, riding her bike, swimming with friends, taking Bailey for walks, bright colors, dresses, "high heels", her friends, any sport and anything that lets her be with her daddy...even yard work or chores.  She is mostly likely to say, "yes" to whatever your propose that involves time together and movement of some kind!

She is the first one in the water at the beach, the first one to order her ice cream, the first one to run down and meet the mail man, the first one to suggest a movie, the first one to come downstairs most mornings and the first one to ask her older siblings "when will I see you again" when they fly away to wherever they're currently living.  For being the last one born she has found her place at the front of the pack.

She is matter of fact, speaks whatever is in her head and thinks of herself as a grown up nearly all the time.

Ellyse Faith is nine.  She is my youngest, and for this year she is still in some ways my "little girl"...climbing into my lap to snuggle up on most days.  She anchors me to the truth of who I am as the mother of five children who span seventeen years.   She reminds me that oftentimes there is a little girl inside of my big girls, and inside of me as well.  

She is unquenchable life, chaos and joy.

Elly in nine and tonight we will eat grilled chicken and broccoli with mashed potatoes and put her candles in "your homemade chocolate cheesecake if you don't have to work to much today and have time to make it please".  

Elly is nine and my heart remains tenderly grateful for all she represents and what her life has changed and blessed inside of me.

 

 

The Unmaking

My eyes feel swollen and my insides have felt shaken for several days, the shaking doesn't seem to end only lessen from time to time.  My body is weary and drained of all energy.  While doing things that must be done the tears come from seemingly no where, I had forgotten I had so many tears.

These days should be marking the final countdown for Katy's wedding.  Instead, we are marking days of grief and sadness as an unwanted chapter continues to unfold.

The decision to call off the engagement and cancel the wedding came late Thursday evening.  

There aren't any real answers to the questions that swirl about...

"Did you see this coming?"

"Why?"

"Is it really over?"

We've sustained a trauma as a family.  

Late Thursday evening we gathered on the same couch in our living room.  At one point my arms held all of "the original three".  My adult children all being held and holding one another as they cried together over what was happening to Katy.

We have circled the wagons pretty tight, and really haven't been separated from one another for the past few days.  We are close and for all the distance that has marked the spaces of growing up and leaving home for the big kids we still remember how to come together tightly.

This is a death and it comes on top of a year that quite frankly feels unbelievable for me.  I've danced around writing all the words about it, trying to name it in ways without just putting it all out there.

And now, there's no space in me to keep it sealed or masked or contained.

January brought Mark's questions about his role at Open Hearts Ministry, his questioning of whether to continue as the Executive Director.

February brought a leave of absence for him.  And, my 50th Birthday.

March he resigned, and I was asked to step in as the Interim Executive Director.

Mark isn't working, isn't sure of what might be next, he needs more time to recover from the toll it has taken on him to lead OHM for the past several years

...and we moved ahead with wedding planning, hoping and anticipating.

May brought a deep betrayal in friendship that left us shaken and disrupted.

And now this.

There's no instagram photo or Facebook post for this stuff.  Its the reality of life, messy and unkempt.

It feels unreal.

Saturday night we packed Katy's things, so many things, from the home she had been readying for her and Aaron.  As the boxes came into the kitchen and I began the familiar task of wrapping dishes in packing paper I was faced with my own writing, from 5 years ago as we packed our home in San Antonio.  This plaque was laying on the counter in her kitchen, waiting to be hung on the wall...

I haven't cried this much in years...probably not since the day we loaded the truck in Texas.

Cried and Cried.

While I am certainly so tearful, grieved and disappointed about Katy and Aaron I realize that the tears and the depth of the the ache is about more.  There has been a dismantling of foundational things, things I had come to count on and in the wake of it I am again in a place surrendering to the truth of my own brokeness and the brokeness around me.  

Packing and moving are such a theme in my story, the boxes and tape and packing paper are symbols for me.  They mark the deconstruction of security and rest and what has been known.  

They reveal the depth of the ache for Jesus to be real and present.  They reveal the ache for comfort, that can come from friends and family but ultimately must come from Him.

Music played in the background as we packed, a playlist on spotify of Nichole Nordeman songs.  (It seems Nichole's music marks all the heavy places in my life and she has done so again.)

 

Being Afraid, Being Fearless and Choosing not to Quit.

Growing up I have vivid memories of finding my dad sitting at the kitchen table in the morning having his "quiet time", bible open, journal of some type nearby for note taking and generally some other book he was reading about spiritual growth.  My mom's bible was always visible, packed full of notes she'd taken on random pieces of paper...the cover was always a bit tattered from use.  I was raised in a culture that valued the importance of daily time in God's word and prayer.

I dutifully followed suit for many years.  Having my "daily" quiet time...not really imagining I would hear something from God, but more imagining that if I didn't make this "quiet time" a priority something would inevitably go south in my life as a result of my disobedience.

Not particularly good motivation for building something deeply personal with God or Jesus....fear of being punished.

There came a time when I felt what had the most integrity for me was to forego my daily "quiet time".  The habit disappeared from my daily routine while I worked through my issues with God, which is just a polite way of saying that I needed to honestly address how deeply pissed off I was at God how betrayed I felt by Him.  I questioned His love for me, His purpose for my life and I entertained the possibility that I wasn't actually interested in a relationship with Him at all.

I found that He was not bothered by my anger or my disappointment.  In fact, I found that He was capable of speaking to me without my having a daily "quiet time"....and that His voice could be heard whenever He wanted for it to be heard, regardless of my choices.  I found that He wasn't just waiting for me to pursue Him, like the story I heard at youth group growing up about Jesus waiting each day to have coffee with me but I am just too busy.  Ugh.  

No, actually He pursued me, quite relentlessly.

Over time the habit of daily time, usually in the morning when by default my house is quiet, returned again.  Music, prayer, liturgy and contemplative practices began to characterize the space of my daily engaging with Him.  I also found that my awareness of His voice was keener, because I had learned what His voice sound like as He pursued my heart outside of the daily routine rooted in "obedience".

Over the past several months a pattern emerged in God's engaging of me.  One of my birthday gifts was a pillow....

The message felt inspiring and timely.

I had no idea the magnitude of what was coming or why I might need this message.

In April a gift arrived in the mail from a friend....

The charms each hold part of the chorus to the song "Oceans" by Hillsong.  Steven sent the song to me a couple of years ago during his first month away at college.  I had asked him how he was and told him I missed him.  His reply was, "Mom...I am sending you this song."

The words have returned to me over and over again since then.  

The latest addition...

A "giving key" with the word FEARLESS stamped into it.

Yesterday as I sat in my chair on my three seasons porch I read my blessing for the day, something I get via email every day.

"May the God of Beginning Again be with you.  May that God hold you near as you grieve what is past and move with faith into what is to be.  May the hand of God carry you across the darkness of loss into the light.  May your courage and your trust become for those around you a living witness to the mystery of death and rising."

The mystery of death and rising...the resurrection.

Death scares me.  I wish it didn't but it does.  Death that comes from evil's assault on my life, in my children's lives, in the work I do, in the relationships with my friends.  

For a long time I didn't see evil at work, didn't know the truth about the insidious nature of it, didn't recognize how prevalent its presence really is.  But after nearly fifteen years of intentional ministry with those brave enough to admit their wounding from abuse I have eyes to see and ears to hear and I can smell the stench of death.

And, no one escapes.  

There have been times in the past few months when I have wanted to quit.  (Quit any number of things...so don't make any assumptions).  Quit because I am afraid, because the water feels deep, because I'd like things to feel easier, I'd like to stop what hurts and disappoints and feels too heavy.

Today, I made my bed and put placed my "be truthful, gentle and fearless" pillow in its place then I walked into my closet and put my bracelet on and my fearless key around my neck.

Today I was grateful for the legacy of quiet time with Him and how He speaks to me today...through music, through the Bible, through email, through my friends and the gifts they send to me....gifts that really came from Him.

So, today I am afraid and I am choosing to remember He is with me and He has told me to "fear not", so Fearless is my vision and how I am choosing to walk...

Today I will take more steps by faith, and I won't quit.

Letting Go Again, and Again

The scene from Les' Miserable when Jean Val Jean is brought back to the home of the priest by the police is one often played when messages are given about forgiveness and grace.

It is certainly that, but I have been sitting with the priest.  Wondering about the hours and days after that scene.  Wondering when the questions came..."Did we just release a criminal to do more damage?"...."Were we irresponsible?"..."Will we regret this?"..."What if...."

The scene is one of letting go.

Letting go of justice.

Letting go of control.

Letting go of the candlesticks, symbolically what was valuable.

Letting go.

Giving it back to God.

I watched the scene today, listening to each word.

"You no longer belong to evil, I've ransomed you from fear and hatred, and now I give you back to God."

I give you back to God.

Caught and Guilty...and shown extravagant, risk-filled grace.

We all long to receive such goodness, but do we long to offer it, and to live the realities that follow such an extravagant gift?

Do we long to be given back to God?

Do we long to give another "back to God"?

Today, as I sat with my friend at lunch she spoke back to me what she heard in my words as I shared some of where I have been and how my life has unfolded since the last time we sat together.  Her words were affirming and kind.  She listens well.

She reminded me of the words from the "Welcoming Prayer".  

“I let go of my desire for security and survival.
I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire to change the situation.”

As she spoke I immediately heard Audrey Assad's voice in my head, the lyrics from one of the songs on my morning playlist. 

Deliver me....and I shall not want.

Letting go allows me to be given back to God, and in turn to give back.

Today I feel the pain of letting go for while there is freedom on the other side there is loss and fear as well.

Extravagant, risk filled grace comes at a huge cost, because when it is needed something precious has been stolen.

And, the truth is these days I find myself over and over again invited to sit very close to Jesus so He can attend to my heart and its wounds, and I am grateful for the invitation.