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Yearly Archives: 2011

When you’re a little boy there isn’t anything much better than playing your heart out at your soccer game, being awarded your first “Piston Cup” and then watching Santa fly in on a helicopter at your Dad’s squadron. Oh and did I mention there are toys in that Helo? Best day ever is too big for one blog post!  To be continued . . .

12-10-11 . 23-70 . harsh sunlight, no shade

Thanksgiving morning we spread the tablecloth for some memories. Little boys excited for banana bread and these sconesTwo years we had known the hard giving of thanks in trial, then the awe of blessings poured out, now we gathered to learn thanks giving in a new way. Our family mended and blessed we looked to other’s pain and need so we might not forget, so the children might learn. Bellies full and eyes open wide as they glimpse how others their age live, destitute and forgotten with a bowl of food the only dream. Our boys stare at slums and landfills, shacks and starvation and ask why? We tell them this cruel and fallen world and we can’t fix it all. But we can each pick one child and give them what we can – most of all prayers and letters to let them know there is hope, a good God and our love.

Globes are studied, prayers whispered, geography lessons remembered, travel plans debated, little minds mull it over and search the faces. Each one comes to us as if by no mistake. And yes, there was plenty of silliness as always!

We traced our fingers and wrote our praise on the back of handprint turkeys. One more year of tradition and now a new one starts, the family grows. A week goes by, one holiday flows into the next. The tree goes up, the halls are decked. Packages arrive, presents wrapped and I watch most eagerly for a plain white envelope, our children come. My boys run giddy back from the mailbox to take a peek. Pictures, paper, envelopes spill out . . .

I know it’s not being poured out, we are not there to hold their hands or walk a road of total sacrifice. The world is vast and fragmented. I am thankful for my family’s blessed home and most fully focused on the little ones God has given me. It’s hard to leave a comfort zone. But now my children will know better the harsh world out there. They take a step and put pen to paper. Young men just learning to read and write they are generous with “Hello”, we will have to work on the rest.

They learn to how write a letter at the kitchen table. As I address Christmas cards they will spell out hope to a child a world away. They will learn thanksgiving must know the dark places, the emptiness and need in order to count the blessings. I pray that God will work and maybe one day our children will meet and share His words.

We learned about giving the gift of the gospel as well as food, clothing and education to a child in need this holiday through Compassion International.

11-24-11 . 11-29-11 . 12-13-11 . 24-70

These photos dont do justice to the epic feat it was to bake these scones for Thanksgiving with my officially toddling one year old on the loose. They don’t show how my house was COVERED in cracker crumbs by the end. I neglected to get any of him AFTER he got out of the high chair and played a fun game where he threw crackers on the floor, stomped on them and ate the itsy bitsy pieces. What else is not sufficiently captured is the overwhelming, brimming up and spilling over joy that this morning was. My little boys away at work with their Daddy, Christmas carols playing, food being prepared for my family while my precious baby man did his thing. I laughed at his enthusiasm for little golden rounds of crackery goodness. I marveled at the wine hued beauty of cranberries chopped, spilled, mixed and baked. I took in the geometry of cooking utensils scattered about the counters. My heart swelled and I praised God for this perfect morning. What goodness He gives amid a whirlwind. Kind chaos followed by tea and baked goods.

11-23-11 . 24-70 . I added orange zest from one orange to the recipe

I really hate Halloween. Yes I have said it. I hate the taunting of and reveling in all that is dark. I hate walking around the neighborhood and seeing front porch zombies and ghouls. I recoil at the sight of pseudo graveyards in neighbors’ lawns.  It makes me wonder why this need to laugh in the face of the coming winter, why this need to play at death? Where has the hope and joy of Easter gone, will we make it to the humble awe of Christmas? This foreign holiday falls in the season when I remember my sons death, when it is all I can do to cling to gratitude for life and rest in salvation.

October 30th is Joshua’s birthday, the day I spent preparing to meet his new life. Him born a few minutes before midnight, I spent October 31st coming to grips with his death. Home from the hospital with empty arms, my sons pranced through the neighborhood – little Spidermen. Finally I fell asleep to be awoken by ghoulish moans and screams. Someone’s Halloween party soundtrack broadcasted on loudspeakers. I paced and sobbed and questioned where God was and why this world so broken, this darkness so heavy?

The next year I dreaded Halloween. I blessed God and remembered my boy’s birthday the day before as a new baby filled my arms. But oh I dreaded Halloween after a month of shielding eyes from devilish party store decorations. But God was there, bringing innocent magic, my boys dressed as superheroes once again. They ran clothed in all they wish and hope to be. Able to do anything, conquer all, bedecked in strength and fantasy. And I remembered a time when I didn’t know of the heavy pressing darkness, when I saw beauty instead of brokenness.

Again this year I struggled through an onslaught as summer faded and the nights grew long. A month of dreading, I grasped to hold my children close and rejoice in their little lives. Through sorrow and fear He was faithful once again. A day of celebrating the harvest season, a night of playful magic with my boys, dragons and a homemade hawk. The heaviness lifted and Thanksgiving time had come, now on to Advent.

This is His gift when we see the blackness threatening. He gives us myth and story, unseen glory more real than anything we can hold. Never content to leave us in this wasted place, He speaks of spring and promises new life. Christmas is here in the dead of winter. All seems to be hopeless and bleak, will we make it through? The world a wild and hostile place, his creation reveling in depravity, shrinking from his presence.

In this dark place, this cold harsh season he knits a family together, sneaks into the world he has made, born in a cave. Stooping to not only hold but enter humanity he lights the hearth fires, giving us a warm home to return to. The ugliness does not win! We wait for Christ and he does not disappoint. He takes all that is horrid upon Himself, heartbroken more than we could ever know. And we are given gifts, priceless as a child’s dancing smile . . .

Giving Thanks.

I looked up the definition of give. Wow, there are a lot of ways to give something away – to sell, to bestow, to administer, to convey by a physical action, to yield or produce, to be a source of, to bring forth or bear, to make gifts of, to yield under pressure, to manifest or show, to attribute, to award, to entrust to another, to offer in good faith, to let go for a price, to sacrifice . . .

on and on they go but I come to rest on sacrifice. These meanings they paint a picture not of gratitude mumbled offhanded, but a deep spring welling up and spilling over, handing over all we thought we might ever keep.

Because can you really thank someone for what you feel you deserve, own or orchestrate? This day, this life of food and family, homes filled with toys and light, soft chairs to sink into with full bellies and babies playing at our feet – are they ours? When my hand closes tight the joy seeps away, trickling through my fingers, elusive I grasp.

Two years ago, the best Thanksgiving I have ever kept, ever celebrated. One month after my baby slipped away, lips barely parted, I whispered praise. The question is raised, the gauntlet thrown down and the thanks must be given away. Acknowledging who He is, what He has done, all He has given becomes a quite war cry. Boots planted firm in the battleground of my soul. We held each other, we ate quiet and simple and we sang, and I will always remember that day of beauty. Beauty you only see when you have nothing left to give and you give thanks anyway.

A year ago, the pictures are above, a tentative Thanksgiving. Our hearts were being redeemed, the promised child had come, God so very very good to us. But the healing had not come exactly as we had hoped. The road had been long, my body broken. The raw wound was closing over but spirits were sore and weak. I look back and see my body swollen from giving life. I see it soft, all wrapped up in the process and the budding life I hold. My heart shouted joy for this little child, our precious baby. I reveled in his soft embrace, but I yearned for God to restore the time the locusts ate. I cried out for an even path, a spot in the shade to rest because I felt lost and tired in the journey. We gave thanks, we held them close, and we walked forward.

Today I have everything and yet I am in a dry and weary land. I can not do the good I know I want to do. But Oh the riches he has lavished on us. Love and children, baby smiles and soft golden hair. Little boy hugs and artwork at the kitchen table. And still we fall under the fiery unseen arrows, we are tossed and turned by every wave, turning against our own bodies, tearing down instead of building up, fragmenting instead of uniting.

I am at a loss until I realize . . . Praise God for our brokenness! I do not want to be rich in my own eyes, stingily giving a bit of it away. A gift to see my emptiness, ugliness, inability, weakness so I can give away that last little bit that I have – the widows mite, in praise. When I have lost , give thanks. When I am at my worst, give thanks. When all is good, good, good, God don’t let me forget it is your due, give thanks! Give it away so He can move in. What a generous God He is.

p.s. Aaron was really serious about being an Indian 🙂 He thought the pilgrim hat was a bit silly though. We trace our hands, make turkeys the size of their years and engrave our gratitude in marker and crayon every Thanksgiving morning.

11-25-11 . 24-70