• Archive for 2012

    Cuteness on Top

    Wednesday, December 12, 2012

     
     
    ~

    My darling daughter right there at the youngest, summing up the wonder of my babes is all silky soft and beautiful dark, with an impossible lop of twirl on top. One night taking our African friends advice I shakily cut away at her curls. I cried. But the next day as if from heaven I received a gift from my newest sister, sweet Erin, knitted up comfort for my babies bald.  And now she is all silky soft and beautifully dark with cuteness on top.

    ~


     

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    Simple Celebration

    Thursday, December 6, 2012








     
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    It was to be a simple celebration

    I am realising with five littles, simple no longer exists!

    Three with the tummy flu and the other half with a viral flu and a Mama wobbling on a broken toe.

    Yet all the germs settled just enough to have a sweet celebration for our precious one year old.

    With a clean white snow covered theme and simple the aim, we decided that this year we would implement ‘toonie’ parties, a tip off from another large family, each guest (family) brings a toonie for the celebrant and a toonie for the celebrant to donate to a cause of choice.  I love this for so many reasons. For one I am very particular about the toys my children play with, second I do not like having to many toys, I feel as though gift giving as generous as some may be has simply got out of hand and much to extravagant for children’s birthday gifts, another thing that I appreciate is that it offers a chance for my children to give back in a personal way. This was our first toonie party and I like it!  We are going to contribute Jeriah`s donations to the diaper fund at the home where Amaris lived for the first months of her life.  And to spend his gift money, well, we might take him out for ice-cream or hot chocolate, once this family is healthy again!
    ~
     
     

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    One... ohhh Jeriah... One!

    Monday, December 3, 2012


    ~

    Winter hung last year’s moon low and heavy, mirroring round my belly, it’s glow reflecting across the seconds of that nights birth, our fourth, a Son! Grace, complete, filled space with the same touch of Holy as that moon. And I have been hushed in wonder as life and love have stretched golden across my heart, through those first fourteen jaundice weeks, as the yellow drained an unexplained gray crept in with that purple ring round the perfect of his lips that scared his mama so, those wondering shades of gray gave way to three months with not an ounce of growth. 
    Those trembling Father’s hands that caught you a full orbit of nights ago trembled through midnight prayers for health and whole and a life to be lived.  This night a complete count of 365 is filled with the same glorious grace and you sleep contented, heart, lungs, health, vibrant as the moons glow.

    I think, you, my fourth, just thought to stamp hard your mark upon my heart.

    You won me, fully, fully alive, every breath, the gloss of every graced gurgle, every tear lacing down those cheeks I have kissed ohhh so many times. It is only you out of all these babies that still command the nights, with your precious sigh when you have willed your way back between my sheets. It is only you that I have carried as in those nine months, slinged and snuggle against my heart whispering constant your name. It is you my fourth with that generous way that has calmly accepted a twinsy sister.  It is you as we toasted with chocolate and gifted but one brown paper package that sat calmly among your sibling’s reaches and touches and treats with golden sweet stretched across your smile.

    It is you my son whom

    I Love

    Fully and Forever
    ~


     

     






     
    ~
     
    Your life has made the grandest of happy in the deepest of my heart.
     
    ~
     

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    I Blink...

    Monday, November 19, 2012



     
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    I blink and a week is gone

    The last was spent pleasures in the company of my Mother-in-Law

    She knitted with my girls, cuddled with the babies and was smitten by my boy.

    She cooked and cleaned and helped in every way

    We are blessed, tucking memories treasures into our hearts.

    ~

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    Natures Ability

    Thursday, November 8, 2012


     
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    One of the great pleasures of my life is home educating my children. Each little person in my life has a unique mind and learning style. I am constantly seeking wisdom in teaching and training these wonderful lovelies. 
     My most cherished education recourse is the grand outdoors, I marvel at natures ability in leading each of my students to great discoveries, engaging all learners and their unique styles and blessing intelligence in simple peaceful ways.

    ~

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    Gifts of Home

    Monday, November 5, 2012


    ~
    My darling, that wild boy who captured my heart long ago,
    Read my last weeks words from a distant and decided upon his return he was going to love me with 
    an awfully generous gift!
    A set of lovely newness to warm our nook of living. 
    ~ 


    ~
    My gratefulness curls here with my babies watching the sky and trees meet imaginations.
     I sit awhile and talk sweet treasures over distant lines to that wild boy who always seems farther away then I like.
    When the house finally hushes, my evenings find rest with tea and those books that have become companions.
    ~

     
     
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    In these transitions days one of these dear friends has been a constant.
    Lines and lines of simple wisdoms that draw me yet again to awareness that home is a sanctuary and should be sensitively cared for,
    the everyday ordinary encased in splendour.
     ~


    ~
    Homes absorb immense amounts of time and energy.
    This effort is satisfying if one has a balanced schedule and can cover the essentials without too much stress. Essentials include the extras to the everyday round that is part of human life-the celebrations, reunions, disappointments, depressions, sickness, disasters.

    Homes work best when someone is the contented keeper of home life.
    Homemaker is a good description. It really is worth giving full attention to this vital task.

    Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
    ~
     
     
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    Couches and Pillows are lovely details

    But they are only the back drops to the loveliness of life.

    Fully lived through the blessed gift of home.
    ~

    

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    Near Your Alter

    Thursday, November 1, 2012

     
     
     
     
     

     ~

    There was but a three day warning that our fifth was to be expected.

    The very week my husband started the new working routine of being away

    Far North

    Week gone - Weekend home

    Repeat!

    A whirlwind of change

    But God always calms the wild

    Graces me with pockets of peace

    Preciously rare moments that hem the horizons of hectic days

    Dawn and Dusk

    Hours of Heaven
    ~  

    Even the sparrow finds a home,

     The swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place

    Near your altar

    Oh Lord of heaven, my King and my God.

    What joy for those who can live in your house

    always singing your praises.

    Psalm 84
    ~
     My home has a new hum

    Patters of feet, a candid of conversations, lullabies,

    Whir of laundry, bruised exclamations, heralds of happy, trails of tears.

    Exhaustion is real, so is the heap of never conquered laundry, streaks of smudged finger prints and an endless scattering of toys with children who never remember to clean them up!

    At any given time a child needs my attention.

    Yet my home is the host of

    Holy

    In the spirit of each of my blessings!

    I pray the wisdom of a sparrow

    That I may spread my wings safely over my young

    The promise is that

    Joy

    and

    Singing

    Will fill my

    Home

    Knowing the assurance that there is nothing more beautiful

     Then a life rooted upon an

     Alter of service.
    ~
     

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    God has Promised Grace

    Saturday, October 27, 2012


    A months’ time has passed, sweet seconds reverently bowed with the deepest of praise. Patiently I have waited for the heavens to write her poetry, whisper words graced with sensitivity.

    As a Mother I wish every moment of my children’s lives were strokes of pure silver, eloquently draped along lines of love, yet the page of our daughters are blotched with broken that I never imagined would become so intimate. May Grace be a delicate scribe weaving my heart into a written letter of love.

    When the house’s quite wraps around a midnight feeding,

    A curl of cozy under a canopy of beautiful black

    Moments filled with heaven, I hear the whispering of something holy, details strung together miraculous as the millions of blended stars. I store our moments like the Mother Mary, tucking each miracle

    “In her heart and thought of them often”
     
    It was a kick that first imprinted her life into the palm of my gentle touch, placed there by a mother,  she, one of the many I met through mentoring under a roof of safety, a home where love opened shelter to the most needy. Instantly I knew that stately stride of Africa with the strong that conceals a continent of wounds.

    My heart beat thick with thoughtful care for the life sealed beneath her dome of darkness.

    As God knit his most profound miracle within another, a powerful surge of expectance welled deep within my soul, somewhere soon I felt a babe was to be given into our family. We used all logic, thinking our next would be birthed into our life through agents of social services; we filled forms, read books, researched and spent many a day talking and praying.

    An urgent certainty filled my moments that right beyond today our child waited.


    Then faith’s crux stirred something deep inside. A silent knowing that I was being guided to lay these God birthed hopes down. Three tear blurred hours I knelt in a sanctuary of prairie sky, golden fields witnessed the wrestle to release all hope over to trust. Each tear was for the loss of a child I felt so near.

    The very days that God lead me away from the perusal of adoption God spoke adoption to another Mother.

    She had birthed her daughter beneath a haven of hope with summer’s full choir singing lullabies.



     
     
    She bravely attempted the challenging role of Mothering. Bravely she made a decision only the strength of a Mother could carry out, placing her daughter into the humbly honoured life of another.

    Tenderly I wrapped arms around a babe I have loved forever. Instantly she filled a chasm of longing within our family, so wide and deep only the wonder of her life could fill.
    It feels beautifully whole to watch her sweetness of smile warm a deep part of our heart, reserved for this child alone, to feel her heart beat strong with life, causing your own to shudder with the thoughts of how close hers came to fading into a sorrowful sea of statistics. I see in her the beautiful velvety brown of her heritage and the hope of all heaven within her soul. I as a parent with all the passion of Motherhood will breathe daily my love over her; I will clasp and cover her tight against my own heart fiercely sheltering her from the dangerous ugly of a world she was released from. I will pray a million humbled thanksgivings for the tremendous gift of
    Mothering this precious girl.
     

     Grief will also be carried on the grace of this blended blessing. Just beyond the good of my life, a young women lives lonely with ever ugly truth, completely crippled by the horrors of abuse and abandonment. 
     During the midnight hours of wrestling through the birthing of adoption, Roger and I wondered if life could have been different if love were to have met her in those recent childhood years.
    Outwardly this one is the look of every other with her smart phone, skinny jeans, tremendous smile… if you can witness one during those teen years.
     Anger is desperately concealed by normal.
     Her life exposed a difficult, that lost will never be found sitting in our ‘holy’ temples of safety.
    The scoffing person with their eyes averted is the one screaming the loudest.
     Where was I when the Mother of my daughter needed the flooding warmth of love covering and caring for her?
    Where was I when she felt the hunger pains of childhood weeping in an ally of darkness for rescuing paternal arms?
    Where was I?

    I wish I could turn back tides of destruction. I look into the thrashing wild of this young women’s soul and search for a beacon’s guide to safety. On the shoreline of my life I see a beautiful stretch of silver hope.
     

    My daughter once adrift brought still by the breath of all things lovely a true Holy Grace.
    ~
     
    

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