Outward View

 

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Sometimes the only thing you need is a glimpse

A framed view through the forged clear of a thousand crystals, molted and poured, transfigured into thin transparent  beauty, is this what has grown strong all around yet still out of focus, blurry edged by life and the everyday of living.

How is that I am the last to see those prayed for miracles, faithfully filled?

I, scrubbing hard at the pots, sat-over three meals, oats and soup and dinners still clinging, grease and grim and toil and it is this that steals me away from a sanctuary of rest.

Here is another of my daily alters, a wash bin, suds and the fervent prayers of the simple.

‘Oh my Lord heal, masterfully sculpt what you have placed together, imbed in me the wisdom mothering requires, may I sense your Holy hands cradling my trepid steps, oh that I may lead them to you’

Weakness comes bent over this domestic place of pray, all my broken sloshing around, I say it to heaven that moment

‘I fail’

 Ever so gently I hear ‘look up and see’.

This view from my sink above this alter that has caught my tears, a miracle, all of them together, peaceful and precious with the girl who has been ‘Promised Grace’ sitting under heaven with the leaves and sky of spring singing hosannas.

Beauty that clears

She could have been ripped from this earth, aborted and lost. Never held, never cherished. Neglect could have continued, never a lullaby, never sweet nothings whispered, long nights of whimpering for a mother to meet basic needs.  I still shudder to think of her home coming week, how she slept for twenty-four hours solid, a three-month’s learnt ability to shelter her infant fragility. How her first mother wanted, tried terminating life. Over and over again. When I asked her why she never chose the way of the world, she said it ‘I could never open the door of the clinic, it just always felt too heavy to open’.

Another miracle, one I could have missed. The month we started our pray for this child, the one yet brought to us, how we asked for protection, Jesus to shelter when we ‘future’ parents could not. Our prayers begun the month God started to knit her perfection in the dark womb of another.

I am learning ever so slowing,

The most powerful prayers come from thunder of our hurt

This beauty viewed from the broken is the miracle, soft and simple and almost missed.

~ 

 

 

Quiet Bags

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We stole away

Slipped south for some laughter illuminated by sunshine

The whole of my husband’s family gathered for Disney

I knew, as a mama to five, that we would need some quiet slipped in between all that wonder and enticement,

A few stitches and some thoughtful care, four little bags for each of my three age group.

Four for the big girls,

 Four for my boy stamped and sealed perfectly in the middle,

Four for those babies whom keep me ever so full.

Each tie stringed left over curtain material bag had some quite inside.

Offering the perfect slow down during a perfectly exciting week

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Just a few of our magical moments

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Sparrow

 

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It is as the leaves unfurl and sparrows have returned to alight upon their tree top balconies, singing forth the melodies of this season. It was on this eve when every mother listens for the gentle humming praises of motherhood, another Sparrow flew on from this world, taking with her the beauty song of her young life.

Our friends, with their three blonds all ages under-knee, will lay forever their youngest.

How do you bury a baby?

With all her locks of silk and those eyes forever dancing?

How can this ancient passing of time offer life and death in but a second?

I’m a crumpled mess, with my babes all about and my grief falling moist about them, such grace to have five upon my lap, all this life, cherished as mercy from the grave’s view. Sparrow has taught me this, all I have is this second, tomorrow is not for today, I don’t live it for my own, because I am a Mother, and when these times come you only wish for one more second and then another and enough to fill a life and watch your babies join choruses of earth adding in the miracle of their lives. This is the wish of each Mother.

But how when the sparrow’s song falls silent?

And the next season is as cold as the earth that has covered your heart.

When I kiss little fingers all tangled up with mine and I run tenderness over a wound and I wrap one all up in an embrace, I ache with love and it’s an ache that knows how fragile this beauty is.

I hear the tenderness, a Father’s words before the piercing death of his own Son.

‘Not even a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.’

Mathew 10:29

There is fear in trust, but perfect love casts out fear.

This is the only way to Mother.

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Glorious

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I have seen green, so vibrant.

Blossoms floating as a dream on spring’s softest breeze.

I have caught glimpses of a new season through pictures

The west has woken and in the far off east,

But us

Here in the middle of this Northern Land

Must wait

 

This is another of my lessons in patients,

Not to hurry seasons on.

The cold still clings, yet I yearn for more,

To inhale slowly the warmth wafting through the forest

I hush, listening for the song birds’ return,

Eagerly I hope  for sight of a robin’s blazon crest.

Search for shoots,

Promises of a thousand hues.

I feel like Noah,

Praying for solid beneath a season of tossing.

I say it to my girls; whisper it behind their veil of locks

The way Noah coed it to a dove,

 

‘Bring me hope’

 

Nothing came of my rushed desire.

I watched mornings rise over winter long into springs season.

  Until one morning

I washed and stored winter’s clothing the day I brought out sleeveless dresses of lights and whites

and my little ones ran barefooted over meadows full of life.

It all happened in a moment

The familiar

 

Gloriously

 

 Changed,

By the sweeping steady of a God whose rhythm is

Goodness.

 ~

 

Weighted

  ~

I never thought that when I whitewashed thrifted furniture, painted a fresh coat on the walls, hung the shelves and arranged the baskets, stacked tidy rows of beautifully printed cotton,

 My first project

 Months after that first hopeful stroke of paint,

 Would be the weight of a baby’s blanket

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Amaris’s tears started then

And have slipped ripe and full over the beautiful brown of her skin since

All the tenderness offered could not sooth the fragility of her hurt

I have wept with my daughter

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With the sun rising hopeful over our days and long into the soul crushing hours of night

Days slipping way to a whole season of tears

Experts say the moist is memories

An infant’s way of expressing the depth and force of pain

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I weep because I can’t go back in time and wrap my infant with security and safety

I weep so weary

The tears rattle a soul right through to my brain

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This is adoption

So much brokenness

Mine, hers and a God who is molding us

Forming the bond through the wrestling pains of life

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God leads to wisdom

Teachers, experts and Doctors

Who deposits tools and keys and a whole new way of life

That covers the broken and heals their wounds

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I’m the mother and I see the signs

The special care it will take going back, journeying the darkness, letting the brokenness be filled with light

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That pendulum of special needs swings wide and vast

We teeter in the sensory processing spectrum

Along with almost every other child of trauma and neglect

I ache for my girl who is worth so much more then was given

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Knowing why the tears

All her pain gushing out

Knowing her brain formed around stress and the damage it has caused

My Mothering heart winces

It can cripple with this care

 Or it can cradle this wee one

Draw her nearer

Embrace the broken

Wipe another tear and then a thousand more

I can swaddle her then tuck her under a weighted blanket that calms and soothes her senses

I can grow and learn

I can be a purposeful healer

 I can

 Love

And be assured that God has

Kept track of all my sorrows.
    You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
    You have recorded each one in your book.

I can offer

A sacrifice of thanks for your help.
For you have rescued me from death;
    you have kept my feet from slipping.
So now I can walk in your presence, O God,
    in your

Life-Giving Light

Psalms 56

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Tender Mercies

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There is story being etched in these days of silence, somewhere in the deepest eves of my Soul my Lord is working, there has been darkness, beatific, the word I make a life to, seems like shadows of yesterday,

I have felt tossed

I have tumbled

I have clenched and it has ached.

There has been no cease hollowing out the mire.

I toil and I travail, believing, surely beyond the tomorrows spring will come

Slowly bringing me back the rhythms of beauty,

My deepest love, the man, I have leaned heavy into, whispered it strong and sure into the late of night

‘I wait quietly before God,

For my victory comes from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

My fortress where I will never be shaken

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,

For my hope is in him.’

Psalms 62

Quietly I have waited and in the quiet I wait,

To hear hopes soft unfurl

The essence of beauty breathing tenderly once again

May your grace, my dear friends, walk patiently with me?

Listen to the words of my days,

Hear the story in Beatific

Binding

Beauty

Blessing

~

 

Simply, SIMPLE

~   I have found it takes six months to settle into a new family rhythm after a baby joins our family. Jeriah was around six months when our involvement in Amaris’s life took a turn and we adopted her into our family. We went from a family of five to seven in less than a year! Adoption takes time, bonding takes time, ’twins’ take A LOT of time, all around our family has been adjusting, re-adjusting, then adjusting some more, for months now! The constant changes were starting to take its toll; opinions, emotions, tempers and tiredness were all running high in this home. After floundering for some time, Roger and I decided things had to change. Roger took time off work, we made a very detailed list of things that were bothering us, from character to cupboards, and set about tackling these trouble areas. First we talked through our present life, decided we needed to simplify and streamline nearly every aspect of it. Our motto is simply, SIMPLE! Second we worked on our relationship! We both knew we needed quality time together, yet with so many babies and the variables brought with each child we rarely were getting windows to be alone together. We planned twelve in home dates, one for each month, by planning in advance we have the assurance that there is something fun and for just the two of us in the near future.  We planned in home dates because then we do not need to rely on a babysitter or remembering to make reservations. We made each date simple enough to achieve it! Then we took a deeper step, we both needed to peel a few layers of stress back and expose the areas that were bothering or hurting the other, wow, this was not easy, like the layers of an onion each  slice hurt. Vulnerability and humbleness is never easy. I am always amazed at what can build up almost silently, between two people, even two people deeply in love. I am grateful that we both were able to go deep into our love and be willing to face challenges and desire to meet each other’s needs.  Just by connecting and refocusing a weight was lifted off our marriage, of course we continue to work together, and challenges arise but defiantly we have both seen the blessing of being united again with single focus of loving our God, each other and leading our family! Third we streamlined all aspects of family life. School, programs, socialization, character training, everything surrounding our children and their needs, this is of course ongoing as family life is always changing. It feels so good for Roger and I to both know what’s going on in our home and in our children’s lives, and be of same mind. Fourth we organized our home, from top to bottom! We went through every space and made it fluid for five children. We simplified and organized and ironed out all lose ends! What a relief and what a blessing! No more wasted time looking for things or trying to find places for things. Life is never going to be perfect; with each child God has blessed us with he has faithfully and very painfully chiselled away at both mine and Rogers’s perfectionism. This is a hard lesson to learn, laying perfect down.  Yet I believe that in exchange you receive love and life. As Roger and I worked away at the chaos in our life we asked God for wisdom to add only the best for our family, the best is not always perfect and perfect is never the best. Yes we cleaned and organized not so we could have a perfect home but so we could achieve what needed to be done each day with the minimal of hassle involved.   We thought through each space so our kids could reach, clean and put things away with little to no help from an adult. We got rid of SO much stuff to create more space, less clutter, and to live within our means, financially, space wise and with our very precious time. We both have felt ease come into our lives, united in home and hearth, we move forward free and full, and with the blessing of focus. My desire over the next few blog posts is to share my tidy spaces, not so as to say I have everything perfect in my home, because I don’t! A lot of life lives here! Only to share some of the places that got a good overhaul and capture them while everything is still in its rightful spots! I cleaned out the kitchen! Twelve hours, three garbage bags of trash and give away, thirty buckets if clean-to-dirty water, later I had a sparkling space! By the end of breakfast the next morning blue-berry finger smudges and spilt milk removed most of the previous days luster! But the cupboards and counters remain tidy and pretty. My favorite is the phone counter; we made it into our command station of sorts     A place for mail ... In, Out & Sorting   A place for little things… Thumb-Tacks, chalk, paper clips…   Pens in pretty pails… A place for my binders… Home management, contacts, medical information, and my daily home journal. A place for keys… No more scrounging around in the drawers for them! A place for stationary… My labels and more delicate office supplies. A place for every little thing you have no idea where to put… The junk drawers were turned about into something manageable and useful!   I purchased the hanging mail files and the ‘little things’ boxes from Martha Stewart @ staples. The pen pails, container for my stationary and junk drawers, the metal things that are holding my binders upright (they are napkin holders) from IKEA. The key hook is from Wal-Mart, fastened by 3M wall-mounts. ~ Ahhhh...  it feels lovely to have such a space as this, I haven't lost my keys all month, wink-wink! ~

Gurgles of Laughter & Gurgles of Water

~ I have had some troubles   Finding time…   with my blog host…  mostly… tiredness quenching creativity Yet today the sun is stretching her warmth catching the crystals of moist glistening over my bare babe Laughter and water are gurgling together, listening to both, lifts my load and fills me with    purest delight. ~