Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 315
February 9, 2012
February 8, 2012
Links for 2012-02-07 [del.icio.us]
@ Q Ideas .... Gabe Lyon, father of a son with Down Syndrome, considers the extraordinary 8 percent -- and gift of being Cade's dad. A profound read and discussion.
How the Sermon on the Mount encourages the Joy Dare
@Mom on a Mission... How one amazing mom took up the Joy Dare -- spurred on by the Beautitudes... Yes, yes, yes!
What we're listening to while working on math...
Vaughan Williams & The Lark Ascending - so beautiful...
The Relevant Conference is Now Allume Social!
... have you checked out the new vision of Allume and Allume Social?
allume
.... gathering around for life in the Light of Christ. Join us?
Got Just One Minute?
with Wess Stafford... "I have become convinced that if God stands a child before you, for even just a minute, it is a divine appointment
February 7, 2012
When Winds Blow & Love Tries to Hold On
The old threads cut up, laid down, stitched side by side, that quilt, it flaps on the line.
A quilt for beds and bodies twined in the dark, hung out here to ride spring winds.
The sun warms the back of a bare neck.
I feel it, and on my arms.
A breeze sways and the wooden pins still hold that quilt on the line.
My Dad, he leans against the wire fence watching the windmill pump. The bonneted Mennonite girl comes out from the house and they talk windmills. They talk about water and wind.
The things that run through your fingers and you can never quite hold.
The windmill hums round with all that rushes in from somewhere else.
It makes water of it.
I'm watching her square scraps rock back and forth in the heat, a sometimes sail that falls dead still.
We ask her at the pump for rhubarb and she says yes and she gives us two heaping armfuls and we give her three dollars. She hoes her rows. Over her, clouds drift west. The windmill vanes spin.
Dad and I, the kids, my Farmer, Dad's wife, we drive to the next farm over, the one with the shingle hanging out front that reads "PRODUCE." A horse stands there patient with a buggy.
I walk amongst the pots, evaluate shades of geraniums. The Farmer and the boys ask after seed potatoes. Dad leans up against a door frame.
I pick magenta blooms, 12 in 4 inch pots. I carry the flat past Dad, set the blooms upon the counter. "You picked pink?"
Dad shakes his head, incredulous at the rejection of my proper upbringing, the years of his formal red geraniums and starched white petunias. I wink at him, half smile, shrug the shoulders sheepish and sometimes you just need to find your own quiet way.
Sealed jars of honey and jam line the walls behind the counter, three dozen homemade carrot muffins lure from a shelf.
A Mennonite in a blue-collared shirt, suspenders, nods, leaves his conversation with a white bearded man in a straw hat, steps up to the counter, asks me quiet. "That is all for today?"
Malakai pats my hip, points hopeful at the muffins and I shake my head and the Farmer nods his smile, reaches for the back pocket of his Levi's.
The white bearded man at the door turns, the brim of his straw hat catching light and I think I see.
It's been twenty years, and those years, they've wrinkled and they've sliver lined and they've worn, but I think I see who he is.
"Dad? The man at the door?" I murmur it quietly.
Dad raises his eyebrows and I nod towards the door and Dad's eyes follow. "Is he Daniel?"
"Daniel?" Dad's feeling about his memory warehouse.
"Daniel and Sarah — they fed all our pigs the year we did the barn renovations. I would have been…" I try to remember. "Fourteen?"
Dad nods his head slow and the light comes, a recognizing, and he smiles. "You just might be right."
"Sir?" Dad calls towards the door and I reach for geraniums. "Might I ask where you live, sir?" Dad steps towards the white bearded man all in black.
"Yes." The Mennonite's weathered hand strokes his beard, putting the words together first.
"I live just around the corner, to the left, and if you go three farms over, we are on the north side."
The man's German accent is thick. Dad smiles knowing, shakes his head that they'd meet here and I remember a summer evening and his barefoot, braided daughter and the way the horses smelled in the shaded cool of the barn and the clanking of the stanchions, the cattle all standing for milking. "Then you are Daniel Martin and a long time ago you finished my hogs." Dad offers his hand, offers Daniel his name.
I see Daniel's light flicker, and how we look into eyes and back through years and all the ways time changes us. "Yes, yes!" He takes Dad's hand heartily. "A couple hundred hogs I fed for you that year."
Dad smiles. "And I think you and Sarah came once in the horse and buggy to our place — for dinner." It had taken them all afternoon coming, the spokes making the slow miles. I can see Sarah's black cape on a hot July night.
"I remember, I remember." Daniel's happy too, his beard and all the whitened years falling mid-chest. "And your wife?" he looks behind me and my geraniums, past Malakai pressing against my leg, listening. "Is your wife here?"
"Yes……" Dad looks around, out towards the pots of tomatoes. My stomach knots tight. Dad and Mom's divorce is what — eleven years ago now?
I look away. Wish I could slip past, by, rush away.
"Yes, my wife is here, Daniel." Dad nods towards Daniel Martin and Daniel Martin nods happily towards Dad and I think my lungs are collapsing.
"But I don't have the same wife. I'm not married to that woman anymore."
I think of Mama's white hair. And how twenty-five years can be swept away with a few words.
And I want to reach for it, seize it, hold on to all the things that slip through your fingers, wind and water and some dreams.
I see how the clouds pass over Daniel's eyes, dark shadow.
"Oh."
He says it slow and I hurt so bad I want to bend over, gaping for air.
This, it's like feeling it all over again — all of where you came from just blown away in the wind and the wind is the father whom you love and I stand still… still here.
I want to open my heavy mouth and find words.
I want to tell Daniel I still have the same mother. That I still have the same God.
That the vow to love never changes, regardless of the direction of the wind.
I want to say that I limp, broken by storms.
I want to say that sometimes you think you might die, and for all your praying, things slip through your fingers, water and wind and dreams.
And did God answer all our prayers? No one enters into the real joy of the Lord in spite of the hard times —- but squarely through the door of the hard times.
I want to choke it out: that I wish that the pins had all held.
I want to say that what I want to be, isn't — but I know He still is.
God's purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.
But I say nothing.
And I can't slip out the the door, these two men and all my past filling it, and I stare down at my pink geraniums and all these years that aren't anymore.
I feel how the wind can pump water and my own grief near spills.
I chew hard on my lip, fight back what you can't see.
Dad asks Daniel about his crops and if they have the corn in, and yes, some, three acres out of ten and things are different in a world with horses-drawn equipment and windmills and same wives, and I whisper Excuse Me, to slide through that door.
Like I could just excuse my wrong mama, and duck out the door and the wind waves the geraniums, blows pink petals into the air and away.
Dad's wife, she sees me. She calls from the tomatoes, "Ready to go, Ann?"
I stand with my blooms.
Strands of hair blow across my face.
When will I be ready to let go?
There are things that if you keep trying to hold on to, you'll fall.
Lean against love and you'll stand.
I wish I could whisper it to Dad and the last 20 years: Love lets go of it's ultimatums — to ultimately hold a person.
Dad's second wife chooses her pot of tomatoes all in budding yellow promise.
The wind, it carries Dad's voice, Daniel's voice, all that was, and I hear.
Sometimes you get wind of Grace.
Malakai looks up. "Mama? Ready?"
Yes… Yes, I'm ready to go. To let go.
Ready to let go of pain of the tearing apart of what was. Ready to take the ripped scraps, stitch them together, to make a sail from what's dead and catch the wind ahead.
Ready to take wind blowing in beyond my control, and just make water of it.
I've been thirsty too long and I am desperate to drink.
Sometimes letting go is how to find out He holds.
Malakai, he helps me carry the geraniums.
Over head, the clouds, silver-lined, sail on….
Sail over the windmill still singing.
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edited from archives
Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.
To read the entire series of spiritual practices
For the Next 2 Weeks: The Practice of Love How do we love in difficult places? Our husbands? Our children? How do we live out the greatest of commandments? We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….
Today, if you'd like to share with community The Practice of of Love … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.
Links for 2012-02-08 [del.icio.us]Got Just One Minute?
with Wess Stafford... "I have become convinced that if God stands a child before you, for even just a minute, it is a divine appointmentallume
.... gathering around for life in the Light of Christ. Join us?The Relevant Conference is Now Allume Social!
... have you checked out the new vision of Allume and Allume Social?
How to Build a House {into a Family}
They build it with their own hands.
They build it in the angling sun and they are loud and happy and they pack in in all the gaps with handfuls of snow spraying like sweet sugar everywhere.
They talk of sleeping under stars and sleeping in coats under blankets and with a flashlight and candles and the dog, the dog right there at the door. When one lies down, they nudge on; they have this vision.
They say that this will be like nothing ever before, the most beautiful one ever. Levi pulls off his touque, hot and sweaty, and piles his snow high on the wall.
They build this snow house. They hand me a shovel.
'There needs to be a homemaker exercising some measure of skill, imagination, creativity, desire to fulfill needs and give pleasure to others in the family.
How precious a thing is the human family…. Does anything come forth without work?
The family is an art form.
And if human relationships are to be beautiful on a wider form,
the individual families making up a society have to be really worked on by someone who understands that
artists have to work to produce their art."
They tell me that –
how they have sculpted something that will last beyond the next thaw.
That they have made a memory and what can erode that and wasn't it worth it?
If we build companies but lose the company of family and if we build visions but lose sight of relationship, have we only built these hollow canyons of pain?
Family is this altar you lie down on and build joy.
All that life in their cheeks, all that effort, all that love, it flames with a heat of it's own.
I watch how she works with that shovel.
How she crawls straight through that door in the wall, exhausted but smiling, her hair blowing long in the wind.
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Links for 2012-02-07 [del.icio.us]I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
February 6, 2012
What to Do in Hard Times
I would wonder later if I had hugged him tight enough before he left.
I would put in laundry and wonder when I'd wash his again.
Wonder if that plane would get him the 16,000 kilometers home again, across the jungle, an ocean, the mountains, the prairie, wonder if he'd ever find his way back here to the farm again.
What if the someone you love doesn't ever come home again?
It's crazy what you think of when you wash piles of denims and sort the whites.
When the washing machine whirls around, around, I can almost feel how this world keeps turning and he's somewhere far away and on it and I am far away here. And how someday it turns without us, us a vapor and us no more here but eternal.
You can't get time back. Is that why the saints wrestle with God — until they see even hard times as holy times?
I will not let You go until You bless me.
When I pass his room, I stand in the doorway. He didn't make his bed before he left. I want him to come home and fill those quilts again, bare feet dangling out the end.
I want him to whistle too loud and leave his books open everywhere with apple cores here and there and I want him to follow me around the kitchen talking about Ron Paul and Mitt Romney and American politics even though we're Canadian. I want him to keep opening up the fridge and scouring for something more.
I even want him here to tell him to stop teasing his brother and pick up his coat and only speak words that make souls stronger. When you might not get any more good moments – you'd take even some bad. And I'd take the ugly with the beautiful because the hard stuff is the heat that refines.
Do I think of him more now that he's gone than when he was here?
Why do we not know how much we love until we've lost?
That's what a man I knew said the year after they put a headstone on his son's grave.
"Now I think of him everyday. Before I did not."
I didn't ask him –
Did he wish he had seen the gritty chronos time as gifted kairos time?
I gather clothes up off the floor of his room and pull the blankets up. I don't want to think about the possibility of him not coming home.
My parents buried a child.
My husband's parents, they buried two.
My father said that the day Aimee was killed, he looked across the fields and a neighbor kept plowing his dirt. Kept going about his work, breaking open the earth and turning it over.
We'd have to cut open the earth and lay down a child, a daughter, a sister.
My father said he was madly wild to go over there and rip the keys right out of that tractor.
How could anyone go about ordinary time when nothing was now ordinary time?
Why do we not see that hard chronos time is holy kairos time until we don't have any more time?
The washing machine, it just keeps spinning, spinning on and on.
I haven't enjoyed all the moments – some of them have just about killed me. And now, if he didn't come home and it does happen and I know, I would want even those back. It's true: One child can keep you in contractions for decades and it can hurt to breathe.
But to wake to the moments and embrace the moments, all of them, the exhaustingly hard and the wildly good and the ugly beautiful, because God only comes to us through the moments. And He isn't only in some moments, abandoning us in others. The saved are called to spend all of their lives to Him who paid it all.
It's how many days now until he gets home?
And what mother doesn't think it — what if he doesn't?
I have to ask: if he never came home – would something in me be over? Would joy be over, would gratitude be over? Would sadness no longer be islands in my day, but my sea?
I would lose him and he would lose the witnessing of the trees bud out this spring. Lose his annual planting of the potatoes out in the garden. Lose the chance to bring home a girl someday with a ring.
I have to ask: Would I still care about the frogs when they came to the pond and sang in early May? Would it matter to me if we put seeds in the ground, if anything good came out of the earth again? Would I still listen to Dvorak's eighth symphony or is there any music in this world that could pull notes up around a brokenness that I would never want to heal?
Be present – because the present is just that – a present. A gift. No one has to carpe diem, seize the day, of everyday chronos time — we can all grind our teeth through as many of the difficult moments we want – and miss who knows how much of our life? How do you know which moments are the kairos moments to seize and the chronos ones to merely survive? Maybe the ones you aren't seizing are the ones that might change you?
What if your present was giving you more gifts than you ever imagined?
But maybe it isn't so much about as carpe diem – seize the day.
Maybe it's about this: God uses the day to seize us. God carpe diems.
God seizes the days: God seizes time and uses it as an instrument to transform. God seizes every moment to sculpt souls and shape lives and transform ashes into glory. What if isn't so much about seizing kairos moments and surviving chronos moments — but seeing all as Christ-filled moments? That God seizes the moment to make me more like Christ and what if I seized more of the moments, because there is something of my Savior in them?
I stack his books on his desk.
I run my hand along his shelves, trace his handwriting on a list.
If he doesn't come home… all I could do is remember him. Not experience him.
And I think that is partly why: That is why even hard everydays are holy experiences.
That doesn't mean I'm not a mess and don't miss far too much. I won't feel guilt about it.
It's just that I'd rather wake up.
I want to be present to the gifts here — before they are gone.
Because those days he is gone? I check email 1378 times, hoping to hear from him. It doesn't matter that I know there's no internet where he's headed in the jungle. A word, a line – anything. Anything at all.
I jump every time the phone rings. I close my eyes and can hear his ridiculous laugh. Twice, I forget and set his plate at the dinner table.
After Mama buried her little one, she said she'd see a blonde little girl in a cart at the grocery store and just for a moment, she'd think she saw Aimee again. For a moment, it didn't hurt so bad – or it hurt worse.
If the plane doesn't ever bring him home, would I say it was God? Or would I say it wasn't God, that something was beyond God, and He slumbered or was indifferent, or was powerless to do anything about it? Why would either answer seem to raise more questions?
Or — what if I had the questions all wrong?
What if all that mattered was to live with the scars of the unanswered questions, leaning into the answer —leaning into the God with the scars deep in His side and my name nail etched into the palm of His hand?
Our wounds may be our unanswered questions — answered only by the wounds of our God.
There were six teens from our chapel who flew half way round the world to serve in an Indonesian jungle. I count their six empty seats on Sunday morning. How do we know how this story will end? And maybe because of the Cross we always do…
Sunday after Sunday, our pastor has us open our Bibles to the book of Habbakuk.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
And I run my fingers again under these lines in Habbakuk. Could I do this? What would I do if He asked this? And doesn't He? Though the fig tree does not bud…. I may not enjoy every moment but every moment I can joy in God. Does He ever leave us?
That's what it says at the top of the page: Habbakuk. The name means wrestler.
To wrestle with God because the hard times are holy times. To not escape time, but stubbornly, fully embrace time, because this is how we stay engaged with God. When we don't know how to hang on in hard times, to just grip hard to God.
The only ones who can rest in God are the one who have wrestled with God… I will not let you go until I you bless me.
That is what the pastor said: There is no tighter embrace than the grip of the wrestle.
Will he come home and I get to hug him long again?
Will get to rib him again and hear his laugh?
Will the fig tree bud or not…
Outside the church windows, the trees stand leafless in winter.
It's there if I feel along His rib, His wounds. And in the wrestle, in this God-embrace, I rest my hand there, in the deepness of the gape — in this grip of grace.
I let go and hold on to Him and all the holy moments just as they come, as many as He gives —
Watch it there out the window, how the wind winds itself tight and long around all the grey, bare trees, sounding like a song….
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So continuing to count 1000 Gifts in 2012, counting more of the endless, One Thousand Gifts…
Taking The JOY DARE to Fully Live — even when hard times come, because I don't want to miss my life:
# 3110… the way he'd come looking for me late: Mom?
#3111… the bare trees in the orchard
#3112… her asking why and us simply praying because His presence is always the answer
#3113… apologizing to sons for blowing it
… again
#3114… teenagers as wondrous as brand new babies when I have eyes to see
#3115… us falling asleep with our sides hurting from laughing
#3116… eating lunch with my brother before he flies with two friends to Holland
#3117… red shoe polish
#3118… popcorn everywhere
#3119… would it be dishonoring to not murmur thanks to Him for using the broken down anyways? #8 this week on the New York Times, 25 weeks
#3120… today: regardless of how hard it is, even now is holy because He is here and I believe…
Unspeakable, unending thanks be to God…
Take The JOY DARE for February — and Count 1000 Gifts in 2012 (maybe winning the NikonD90 camera would be a gift too?)
Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!
Share the joy?
{P.S.: Some were wondering where/how to chronicle their #1000gifts in 2012? Any way that works best for you:
in a private journal, with the free app, on your blog and join us in linking up here on the blog every Monday, on the free Year of Graces calendar, or on facebook or twitter (#1000gifts). I'll be sharing thanks to God each day, Lord willing, on my personal facebook page and on the One Thousand Gifts facebook page — the community there is profoundly encouraging. You are more than welcome to join us! And yes, we will post a new Joy Dare Calendar here on the blog, the first of every month, Lord willing — you can use the Joy Dare Calendar for each month — or not at all.
The point is? Just count any 3 gifts a day — to count 1000 gifts in a year. That's all. Any way that works for you! Just count your blessings!
And yes — we'll be updating the blog with more information about the draw for the Nikond90 camera for those who complete the dare and count 1000 gifts in 2012! Open our eyes, Lord, Open our eyes! The Whole Earth is fully of Your Glory! }
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Free Printables : 3 Ways to Find Joy this week
1. A Year of Graces {A Free 12 Month Gratitude Calendar} Click to print here
2. Count all His Gifts Wherever You Are: {One Thousand Gifts Free App}:
Click here for the free #1000gifts app : The gift of joy for a friend? Print this card about the free app for a friend
3. 1 Paper = 1 Week of Joy
Tuck 1 sheet of paper in a pocket & jot down 7 gifts for 7 days:
(perfect booklet to cultivate the habit of the joy hunt for kids)
(folding instructions for booklet here)
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community's graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Links for 2012-02-06 [del.icio.us]I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
February 4, 2012
weekends are for soaring
M ay all your wanderings this weekend, kindest friends ….
take wing in His peace
because this is how
you fly.
: All is grace
because of Christ alone,
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Beauty for the Weekend : On a Saturday morning… wander through the 20 most beautiful bookstores? …. and how many of these have you read: Greatest Books of all time as Voted by 125 authors. Time to curl up with a good book this weekend?
Creative Inspiration for the Weekend : Looking for an alternatives to Picnik?
Love for the Weekend : With the kids, make up sweet bags of Valentine Confetti and then print out the tags? Find one or two people to cheer up with a little gift bag of the popcorn confetti?
Or better yet — begin planning your Valentine's evening with him: print out this Crazy Fun and Complete Cozy Night In package (and if you don't do movies like us here on the farm, then substitute the movie with a game of scrabbles? Or reading aloud to each other?) Make some plans!
Free Printable for the Weekend : Here's one for the fridge this week
Make a Memory on the Weekend : Easy memory with the kids — a little Valentine Potato Stamp fun?
Clean for the Weekend: Get those impossible, old stains out of the carpet with this cleaner (really!) and then frame up this little free printable stain removal guide?
Heart Strengthening for the Weekend : How to live The Un-Wasted Life … Francis Schaeffer and this truth: "Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way." ― Oswald Chambers
And then linger long with this Prayer for Drawing Strength from Our God … linger long.
Worship for the weekend : Praise to the Lord Almighty with Mr. Ortega… go ahead — sing it aloud – a few glorious times – what God's people have sung through the generations….
Joy in Him, friends! Happy Grace Days!
Links for 2012-02-04 [del.icio.us]I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
February 3, 2012
Sermon on the Mount …on the farm {a video} {link-up}
{Consider pausing the music by clicking the slider directly under the header? And if reading in a reader or via email – click here to go for a walk in the woods on the farm… }
"Why Memorize the Sermon on the Mount?"
"He came — I say – and lived and died and rose again and sent the Holy Spirit in order that you and I might live the Sermon on the Mount…
If only all of us were living the Sermon on the Mount, men would know that there is dynamic in the Christian gospel;
They would know that this is a live thing;
They would not go looking for anything else.
We are all meant to exemplify everything that is contained here in these Beatitudes…
This is not merely a description of the Hudson Taylors or George Mullers or the Whitefields or Wesleys of this world —
it is a description of every Christian.
We are all of us meant to conform to its pattern and to rise to its standard." ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
on Memorize the Mount with us?
How to Memorize the Mount:
— committing His Words to heart & heart to Him
1. Download & Print the Sermon on the Mount Memory Cards:Click here to print cards: Just 2-3 Verses a Week
2. Print and either have comb bound (cards are formatted to give space for comb binding), for ease of flipping cards, propping at the sink, etc.
3. Alternatively, cut and paste into a booklet like a pocket Moleskine
4. Tick off little square boxes for each day of memory heart commitment
5. Find a partner to recite to — have them sign each week on the allotted line
(only *two to three short * verses a week – the verses are in the ESV version & take a bit to load. Thank you for grace!)The link for the Memorize the Mount Booklet Cover can be downloaded right here.
{You can join us in community on facebook for encouragement — and I'll be posting audio updates and encouragements throughout the year on the Facebook page and here on the blog with link-ups so you can share your own memorization– consider joining us?}
Share your Memorizing of the Mount?
Over the weekend, link up right here to your audio, video or other creative recitation of your Memorization of the Mount.
Let's encourage each other! We'd love to catch a glimpse of your world and you mounting the Mount! (And too, go share your memorizing link also with the wonderful Katie at "Do Not Depart")
Links for 2012-02-03 [del.icio.us]I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
February 2, 2012
For the Hard Days {& real weather forecasts}
We're not sure exactly who walked across the boy's bedroom carpet with green paint on their heel.
There is an Everest pile of laundry to be folded in the mudroom and another 3 to be washed and kids are making wigs and mustaches with yarn and the oven is begging me to come clean it.
I may or may not acquiesce.
I am not sure who keeps peeling out of snow-soggy socks throughout the house, molting out of winter skins.
The Farmer says it to me, washing his hands up at the sink after this morning's barn chores, "Looks like we've got another one today, eh?"
I glance out the window — What's supposed to blow in hard today?
He's grinning, drying his hands. "Yet another grace day."
And I stand in the kitchen. A farmer knows: Isn't that always our weather?
Whatever's forecasted — When is it ever not right to whisper worship: "For from Him and through Him and for him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen."
Life is only all our moments slipped on in a row, one after the other — and if you turn slow in the light, the moments might shine translucent.
And the surprise of it catches you and releases you and it is what you always hoped and always knew.
There is glory in every now.
Strange —-
how you can turn, turn direction a bit like the wind —
and all this grit becomes such startling grace…
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Links for 2012-02-02 [del.icio.us]I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
Links for 2012-02-01 [del.icio.us]
@ Pastor Martin's -- and interview with Christa Wells: "He has allowed me to "fail" and then used those very moments to bless others more than the moments when I thought I was doing it all right. His beauty really shines through weakness." This woman? Echoes my heart...
Belonging and in-laws
@| The High Calling ... "Because when you say "I do," it's not just a marriage between two people at the altar." A poignant post about love and vows and the family you marry into...
Happily ever after?
@ New Wineskins ... "I discovered that I fear romanticism because I feel inept in expressing it. Sue realized that this longing is planted in her soul as something too big for marriage to fill - a longing only God can satisfy." Secrets to a good marriage?
I Do: Struggle
@ The High Calling.... "Marriage doesn't get easier over time, but it gets less hard..."
February 1, 2012
What Is The Best Gift to Give to A Man ? {Married Love & The Principle of Three Feet}
That's what your mama had said — that it was the last day of January in the middle of a Canadian snowstorm.
And all the farmers up and down the gravel roads had milked their cows in the morning and headed to the city's Indoor Farm Show.
And she had you, her ninth born, alone and late into that howling storm.
Today you turn 39.
What do you give a man who doesn't have everything — but has given everything?
"The highest act of love is the giving of the best gift…."
But what do you give a man who's laid down his life and took out the garbage and fed the dog and changed the diapers on how many kids and worked 18 hour days for years — and still winks when he comes in the back door and sees you?
What do you wrap up for a man who's played how many games of Dutch Blitz
with kids on Sunday afternoons and tied a few thousands pairs of shoes over the years and carried more than a baby or two on the hip, on the shoulder, right next to his chest, long into the teething night?
Who comes to you late and reaches out his hand under the quilts and finds your bare wrist and traces round you with his fingertips and this is enough… just the soundless giving.
I need to know: What do you give a man who knows by heart and by hand, the landscape of your inner parts and loves you relentlessly — regardless?
This is the bestowing of a miracle.
You have done such things for me.
They say marriage can wait – but education cannot. You know how I disagree. Love is the only education that matters.
And I'd rather learn lamplight, you curved around me. And it's what you've taught me with these rings and these vows that have shaped me—
That you can't wonder why love's wearing thin when you're wearing a thick layer of self.
That we're happiest when we both keep giving the other the biggest end of the stick. This is hard. But being angry and lonelier is harder. (About five years of my selfishness can attest to that). There is no such thing as 50-50. There's only giving more and being more happier. Fair and equal is an illusion. The only reality is relationship and this is what Christ lived and died. This changes everything.
There is no successful living apart from relational living. Success is not measured in status or square footage or stocks – but in surrender and sacrifice. Do they teach that in every business class?
And somewhere along the way, especially during the years when I was leaving my twenties — when I was struggling with you are and who I am, with what is never going to be and what is — that's when you've taught me: Easy is how you rate recipes not relationships.
Love is always hard because dying to self is, but I want to do it – because I want you.
This is what Christ lived and died. You've done this a thousand times better than I.
If the "highest act of love is the giving of the best gift" what do you give a man who doesn't have everything — but has given everything?
Remember how we went last week to see Mr. and Mrs. Lyle? What have they been married – 61 years?
And they showed us their little one room pad at the retirement home, her cross-stitch on the wall and his recliner by the window and you nodded and told them how nice it was, this love nest of theirs.
And all I wanted to do was lean over and move those two single beds of theirs right together.
Separated by three feet.
If nothing can separate the love of Christ, I don't want three feet to separate me from your love in the end.
I saw how Mrs. Lyle looked up at Mr. Lyle.
I can't forget that. I never want to forget how she looked at him, all that love and respect and longing.
That's what made me say it there other night in the dark, standing at the foot of our bed, you sleeping.
The whole house sleeping.
I looked out at the orchard in winter moonlight and I heard you breathing, saw your socks lying there on the floor.
And I said it right out loud, "I just want to grow old."
The gift of grey hair and wrinkled foreheads and deep laugh lines and everything settling south and with you.
What does it matter if we never have a vacation or see the Grand Canyon or if the van rusts right through or if the mattress springs sag to the floor like an old mare given out?
We don't have to try to arrive anywhere or climb anything or try to figure out how to make it –
Just make our lives a living sacrifice and let the days makes us like gold, to arrive before His throne.
The luxury of simply, lavishly growing old with you, all the messy, magnificent days adding up to years – I don't know if He will ever give this and it's His alone to give –
But every day is one day more and each sunrise is one day older and what if we were done with missing out on whatever we have right now?
If the highest love gives the best gift – is the best gift the gift of the everyday?
The everyday asking and listening and picking up your socks and saying nothing and rubbing your back and laying out fresh towels and smiling more because this is what you like that best. That our life together makes me happy and you can see it, how my eyes dance.
Everyday washing your stubble out of the sink and everyday sitting beside you and everyday saying nothing but leaning over and touching your hand.
It doesn't matter how our love started or has stumbled – only that it keeps growing. This, by grace, we can do everyday.
There's a thousand ways to keep moving closer, to close the gap on the three feet between us.
It's after you blow out the birthday candles that you go out to the tractor on the last day of January and you move all that Canadian snow. Push back our storms.
I sit next to you on the tractor seat.
There isn't a fraction of an inch between us. You can't measure success in anything but relationship.
That's when you look over from the steering wheel and say it, "This – this here is the best gift."
The way everyday there can moving closer. The way grace can fill the space so nothing separates…
The way love grows older everyday….
The way the days join us again at the hip and at the rib and at the heart…
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Related:
How to Fall in Love Again in 4 Minutes a Day
How to Really Write a Love Letter
How to {make} love {into a marriage}
Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.
To read the entire series of spiritual practices
For the Next 3 Weeks: The Practice of Love How do we love in difficult places? Our husbands? Our children? How do we live out the greatest of commandments? We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….
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Links for 2012-02-01 [del.icio.us]Why Urban, Educated Parents Are Turning to DIY Education
@ The Daily Beast... There are a lot of reasons to home-educate... "Just as much, though, their choice to homeschool is a more extreme example of a larger modern parenting ethos: that children are individuals, each deserving a uniquely curated upbringing." For some it works, others it doesn't... but some folks are finding themselves unexpectedly homeschooling for the joy of just being together in all it's happy messiness...Want a FREE copy of One Thousand Gifts?
{Pssst -- want a free copy of One Thousand Gifts -- or to give away?
Compassion is giving away FREE copies of One Thousand Gifts {it's #6 this week on the NYTimes Bestseller's list} to anyone who sponsors a child -- which is the best gift ever.
{Click through to page 12 to find the coupon for the FREE Book. And the best part? Sponsoring a child through Compassion -- not only makes you *become* a life-changing gift --- the joy your child will bring you - will be a gift to you! I promise you: I can't think of a better way to receive a gift and be a gift...}Choose your heroes carefully
@Cardus... "Our heroes need to include stay-at-home moms, dedicated dads, pastors... We need to honour the people winning in their relationships, encourage those who are working hard to be good parents, and lend a helping hand to those caring for the neighbour in need."
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