Of Baby's Breath, Wedding Lilies, Burial Urns, and Daily Glimpses of God

It rains now. Silver staccato on burnished green leaves; the roads a wet black.

And it reminds me of those teens several weeks ago, screeching and huddling under a single umbrella. Their four adult-sized figures spilled out from under the protective rain cover, while Blake yelled good-naturedly,

"You're stealing my umbrella!" My daughter and three friends cuddled, huddled, and dashed across the food co-op's parking lot to my grey Hyundai, laughing and jumping over puddles. And you have to lean close to share one umbrella in the rain.

These last two months have been a happy maelstrom of planning, shopping, preparing for, and savored-moment-by-moment milestones. My son, my oldest, strode into a university hall in swirling black robe and flat square hat, in line with others to receive four year's worth of hard work in rolled parchment diploma. My view of him swam in teary ripples and I squeezed Mark's hand, my heart beating in joy and pride.

"We made him!" I exclaimed. "That's our son," and my husband's jaw muscles flinched in strong emotion too.

Three weeks later, my daughter strode in swirling crimson robe and flat square hat towards the stage to graduate from high school. I blinked back happy tears, squeezed Mark's hand again, and smiled giddy through proud joyful shimmers that blocked my view.

"I'm so proud of you," I whispered in her ear as we hugged on-stage, handed her diploma to her, and then walked to opposite ends of the stage.

In between, the days filled fast with ...

• ...Morgan's graduation party errands. "Three hundred cups? What do you think? How many cups do people go through on hot days?" and I estimated how many gallons of lemonade to make.

• ...John's wedding errands and decisions. My husband cleared his throat, "So, after the ring bearer and the flower girl enter the room, we'll have the ushers close the doors. When the kids get to the stage and are seated, Melanie will change the music to Canon in D. Danielle will rise, and, Kate, you can enter with your Dad whenever you are ready."

• ...And slipped in between white wedding lilies, and dotted baby's breath in stone jar centerpieces for Morgan's graduation party, my Dad and I planned his funerals and telephoned crematoriums. We talked of death certificates, estimating how many copies we would need, and asked about medical examiners. 

Then, hanging up the phones, my dad and I rejoined Mom on their back patio and listened to the birds, the tinkling water fountain, and the wind in the trees overhead. My Mom, sister, Dad and I carved out frequent times together, not wanting to miss a moment. We fished by the Mississippi River, took prodigious video recordings of Mom and Dad together, attended outside concerts at parks, and sat long in contented silences too. 

On June 10th, my firstborn dimpled and bit lips in emotional joy, clenching his jaw just like his dad in overwhelming delight at watching his bride enter the church sanctuary. All eyes on the bride, my eyes were on him. The groom's breath-taking anticipation flushed him tall on toes, shoulders back, jaw flexing, eyes red, and mouth ever-biting and swallowing in disbelief and proud joy. 

I turned at last to beam at my beautiful new daughter-in-law and to watch my son and my new daughter step onto the carpeted stage. Beside my pastor-husband, they spoke tremulous words of promise, and joy cracked their voices. We wiped happy tears, my parents and parents-in-law beside me in the front right pew, and I savored every single second, thanking God for these moments together, and for every single day. 

And you and me today? We can see glimpses of this gorgeous Creator God everywhere we look... 

• Him holding the umbrella in life's storms saying, "Scooch in to stay dry" and laughing as we run together in the rain. 
• We see this God in proud parent moments of squeezed hands and leaning in to say, "We are so proud of you!" 
• I see him in savored family moments and in the gift of each time together. 
• And we can see our Groom God as he watches in delight and jaw-clenching joy. 

 I've missed you. Thanks for peeking in. How are you? Catch me up in the comments below? 

When Your Stakes Seem Higher

The stakes seemed higher. It's funny how that happened. Every week without a blogpost here raised the cost of words for me, and weighted each one heavier.

Photo: Martin O_ob, Creative Commons, cc license

Busyness first halted me, carrying me away from my desk and you. Days passed, weeks mounted, though, and suddenly fear crept in. I wanted the words to have beauty, to hold meaning, and to be worthy of your time. And that wrangled a finger hold around my throat. It choked my words inside me.

Simple images of grandpas and gardens, and two sons in the dirt. My dad, silver-haired, looking more and more like his dad, kneels on dew-dropped grass blades. "I forgot my knee pads," he murmurs, dipping an orange-handled shovel into a shallow channel.

We're building four raised garden beds again, in the new yard. His hair is starting to curl around the edges, "Like Uncle Kurt," my mom and I notice, and he is so much stronger since September's cancer surgeries and the ceremonial-eating of the only apple on the tree. 

My twenty-year old son is there for his strength and his love of the outdoors. He and his grandpa wield a borrowed yellow mallet, heavy enough to tip me over when I pass it unexpectedly at one point.

"Can I help? What can I hammer?" hopes six year old Daniel aloud.

"Hey, Daniel. Here's a spot you can hammer." John points to an upraised metal reebar tip and crouches beside his brother, and my mama heart sings.

A red cardinal crows birdeee birdeeee birdeee from the highest point of a silver balsam tree behind us, and the rising morning sun warms us. My nose runs from the cold air. A wind shakes cottonwood seeds down around us from the neighbor's tree.

"Ready for the next post, John?" my dad asks, and I snap out of reverie and jump green corduroy sneakers onto my pitch fork, preparing the soil before them.

Write what you know, right? I know about heavy squares of sod chopped and shaken to save any garden dirt; black-capped chicadees and cardinal soliloquies, and sons with grandpas wielding mallets. I know french-pressed coffee oils swirling atop hot mugs, and dirt under the nails despite three washings. I see hard-working loved ones, and smell rain-fresh brown dirt, sliced grass sod, and lilacs from the neighbor's front yard.

And the moment captured is enough. My job is to see and note.

For you? Is there anything that looms taller with each passing day? Step in, pull up the chair, take that first action. The fear will still be there, I confess, but the hidden joy that comes from doing what you were made to do will spring up and delight you. I promise.

How are you? I've missed you. Catch me up?

What I Never Expected to See in My Daughter's Homework Today

"I'll let you hold the broom, Mom," she smirked as we strode across the parking lot. A deep white bucket in one hand, I crossed the blacktop, balancing a long-handled home-made ladle in the other. Tenth grade Morgan stepped primly beside me, laughing and pretending to ignore me.

Photo: Bill Benzon, Creative Commons cc license

We exchanged smiles, and hoisted our items for a better grip. She carried her biology notebook, a mechanical pencil, and a plastic box of colored pencils. I watched the plastic soup ladle we had taped to the end of the kitchen broom bounce at every dip in the dirt path.

"This'll be fun," I convinced her, cocking my eyebrows at her.

Disappearing down a side path by the library, behind the community gardens, and into the woods, we slipped into a sunlit forest.

"I remember this path from when I was younger," Morgan noticed. "It seems so much smaller now. It's about the same for you, though, I bet, since you're still short," she quipped, smiling at me.

Several minutes later we rounded the corner to our spot. Straddling the sandy path was a small green algae pond, cattails dipping in the breeze.

Starting a two-week-long biology micro-organisms experiment, we labeled glass jars, and splashed in water from the deepest layer of the pond. Seaweed and green slime dangled from the black handle and slopped into our jars. After collecting all the water, Morgan and I arranged plastic bags on the wet path to sit on while she annotated her specimens.

Cirrus clouds raced by overhead. Yellow aspen leaves quaked and shimmered. Tiny willows leaned low. Flecks of green plant growth floated on quiet swamp water, and I closed my eyes in the warm autumn sunshine. A distant dog barked, and Morgan's colored pencils clanked for a moment in between hues.

The experiment? We are to feed four jars of invisible life, letting them grow in tin-foiled darkness, and observe them under a microscope after three to five days. The jars sloshed as we walked back to the car, green algae and black muck floating on top. Invisible potential simmers just under the surface. Not knowing what's growing there, we'll wait and see.

The last four weeks have raced by in a blur of hospital days for my dad's cancer surgery and the resulting recovery period, youth group retreats, school, and a lovely women's retreat, amid the unpacking from our move. What I have loved seeing, though, is the life that rises to the surface from murky waters below. Despite fears of major surgeries and sobering statistics, our family saw God's sweet kindnesses every day. Sipping coffee from styrofoam cups in waiting rooms that grew familiar, we recorded moment after moment of God's kind gifts to us, and it moved us. Life that simmered up from the darkness.

Typing here in quiet twilight, I can still see Morgan's teasing eyes and raised eyebrows as she joked and walked confidently through the trees. And it brings me to silent gratitude. Our God who molds sons and daughters, who sculpts moms and dads, parenting us all, has made a daughter and it is beautiful to see. Life has simmered up from the surface below, and I can but stand and watch.

Our God is growing things invisibly deep inside of us. He is at work in our kids, our families, our marriages, ourselves.

What Blocks You from Living Full and Regret-Free

"Should we tell them what the meat is?" she asked me and I could hear the smile in her voice over the phone.

"No, let's wait until later in the meal," I decided. "They'll be more open to it."

The next day we scavenged chairs from all corners of my house and seated seven of us around the scratched cherry wood kitchen table. We prayed, then took turns scooping steaming rice onto our plates. Mom reached for our dishes and carefully ladled a savory meat sauce over the rice, pressing her spoon lower into the pot for more gravy. Garlic and herbs slow-cooked the meat into fall-off-the-bone tenderness, and we asked for seconds, extracting occasional tiny bones from our food.

"It's good!" my husband and kids agreed. "What is it?" Knowing my family, they were open to any news.

"Squirrel. Dad has five of them in the freezer," Mom said, and my family nodded their heads in little surprise.

"Those squirrels stole almost every apple off my tree," Dad said. "I'm down to just one apple left.  I've killed seven squirrels so far," he said, adjusting to a more comfortable position in the chair and smoothing out his napkin.

 I saw my parents again this weekend, my mom cutting my dad's hair. Him with a towel around his shoulders, silvery hair combed straight above his ears and my mom leaning in.

"Don't move," she warned, stretching the blades wide.

I leaned back against their cushioned kitchen chairs, watching them. Outside curved glass windows, my parents' backyard was a haven of landscaped flowers, ferns, and birds at the feeder. An occasional squirrel raced across the fence near the apple tree bobbing in the breeze, its lone apple bundled in a guarded plastic bag.

Finished with Dad's haircut, Mom wiped up slivers of glinting hair from the table and carefully folded the towel off Dad's shoulders, trapping loose hairs inside.

"Let's eat that apple now!" she decided suddenly. "Let's not wait until frost. Dad should eat his apple now..." she trailed off, and we finished the sentence in our minds.

I swallowed back misting tears and grabbed my video camera.

"...This is the first apple from our tree," my mom stated, giving the date and more information. My video-record light blinked red until she ended, and the wind blew sun-tossed leaves across the yard. Autumn's reds and yellows rained on us, then danced across the lawn. 

And I know you have this too... moments that need to be captured and savored, moments that need to be frozen in time. Because whether you have parents who are ill, kindergartners stepping freshly off the yellow bus each day, or taller loved ones walking into the front entryway each night with their briefcases, purses, or heavy backpacks, we all have moments that are slipping away. 

And our challenge? Our mission is to embrace them, to see them, and to fully step in. Step away from whatever you're working on and look deeply into the eyes of the ones you're with. See them, lean in to inhale their scent, and hug them tightly. Fully present in each moment, I want to look up from facebook, put aside my To Do list, and forget the busy. I want to savor and seize each moment.

Is there anyone you need to call? Any conversations you need to have? Someone you need to pause and truly see? Because the truth is, we all have the same moments, the same chances, the same twenty-four hours. And I don't want any regrets.

Say what needs to be said, my friends. Stop and savor life, and the ones around you. Live life fully, deeply, and in the splendored colors of fall. Don't wait.

Crimson and yellow climb up the trees around me, ricocheting off the blue sky. September's heat burns brilliantly, while autumn slips in quiet.

What We Are Drawn To in Uncertain Times

"There's something about a man or woman who has loved God for a long time that is peaceful," she said aloud.

Photo: Ed Yourdon, Creative Commons, cc license

We were stabbing forks into slippery red cherry tomatoes and coaxing precarious bites of spinach salad into our mouths in the hospital cafeteria.

She told me again. "My friend Art, he just commented on how peaceful it was to be around older people who had walked with God for a long time. 'There is a peace about them, a gentleness that just shines out from them. You want to be near them,' he told me. He enjoys spending time with my parents," my mom said, wiping her mouth.

She smiled, and lifted a fork with green olives and grated carrots from the salad into her mouth. I tried, and failed, to get crumbled goat cheese onto my fork.

Her bite finished, my mom spoke again. "He's right. I watch my mom and dad together. He holds her hand, helping her down hallways now, and patiently explains each time she forgets and asks a question again. There IS a peace and gentle kindness about them." She paused and chose another bite, pushing food around her plate unconsciously.

I watched her. This black-haired, blue-eyed Irish mom of mine who just returned from seeing her parents on the west coast, arriving straight from the airport to the hospital here where her husband awaited scary prognoses. And I saw it in her.

Mixed in with the uncertainty and the risk of painful loss was a peace that came from years of walking with her Creator. This peace didn't negate the valid fears, but it simmered and rode the waves, a constant in all change.

In hospital room 4550, four shuttered windows revealed city lights turning on outside and reflecting off the rain. We rubbed our hands with the sanitizing foam found everywhere, and walked inside. My dad sat upright in bed, his navy-striped gown tied in the back, revealing the colorful tattoo on his shoulder.

"Hello, handsome man!" grinned my mom, rubbing his shoulder and bending over to brush back silvery hair from his forehead.

She sat down and pulled out her slim blue Bible, creased on the edges. Opening it, she read silently, smiling at parts. My dad and I had read from Luke together earlier. "I love the gospels," he told me. "They are my favorite parts of the Bible right now."

There is a Peace that flows from men and women who have walked with God for a long time. I see it, and it draws me nearer. He draws me nearer too, actually, this One whose name is peace.

So, it's pancreatic cancer, friends. It was caught early and is only stage one, but it's scary. Sometime in the next few days, my dad will undergo a serious surgery for this and I'll join them often in the hospital. Join us in prayer, will you, please? Thank you, friends.

What Is It For You?

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of other bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE.

It still does it to me, the smell of popcorn. It reminds me of home.

Home wasn't a zip code, a particular house, or the number of years in a place for me. Those changed and there were many.

Rural American bullfrogs bellowed from the cowponds, and I climbed high into a green apple tree. Corn fields rippled for miles, tall honey-colored grasses swayed, and lawn mowers droned sleepy in the distance.

In another setting, mango trees swayed high above our cement block house, while tropical rains hammered and crashed on our metal zinc roofs in a way that still leaves me nostalgic. Rice bubbled over coal pot fires, and neighbors chopped sugar cane stalks, throwing a chunk to the monkey pet nearby.

You know it too. That smell, sight, or sound that reminds you of home. Because no matter what state or country we were in, my mom and dad made it home with a few simple touches. Scrounging up batteries or electricity, they slipped in some family-favorite musicians and suddenly music slid through the house. Familiar refrains from Bruce Cockburn, Kansas, Pink Floyd, Phil Keaggy, and Michael Card peeked around corners, explored new houses, and traipsed over our luggage to each of our family of five. Instantly, our shoulders relaxed and we stretched out our legs.

Mom popped popcorn, shaking kernels at the bottom of any large pot she found, fiercely holding down the lid, as corn rattled in the oil and exploded. She shook her hips and torso in an attempt to give every kernel a chance at the heat and oil; we watched my dad watch her and smile or steal up for a kiss.

And suddenly, we were home.

 My blogging friend, Emily T. Wierenga, award-winning journalist and author of 4 books, has released her first memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. I was honored to read a sneak preview of the first two chapters before it was released, and now I am scarfing down my newly-arrived full-length copy of the book, and enjoying it. You can grab a copy here. All proceeds go to Lulu Tree in Africa. #Atlasgirl

Between the Rains

"We'll have to buy our wood before the rain comes," he mused, carrying in bags and unpacking their tools. Wood saws, buckets, and gangly narrow planks--reverberating at each step-- stacked into the garage or across the hot asphalt driveway. In-laws from the north drove down this week, kindly tackling work projects with us.

Humid air hung heavy and deliciously hot after an April winter. We piled into multiple cars, and snaked the aisles of a home repair store, our list and pencil calculations in hand. We were building shelves, for the garage and for downstairs. In the downstairs family room, years of homeschooling books and textbooks perched in precarious piles, waiting for the three long bookshelves to be completed.

Over coffee and decaf Earl Grey, we worked, sawing, gluing, nailing, and drilling. When the rains came, we inched into dry rooms and continued. Dads, a grandpa, and sons worked. Moms, a grandma, and daughters worked. We younger ones watched carefully as we followed orders, taking mental notes, seeing selfless grace and a hard work ethic. The shelves grew taller. And when the rain came again, we sank into couches for a generational movie night, dusty, sweaty, and proud.

---

Friday and Saturday, I helped at a garage sale fundraiser for our France senior high missions trip. In between the rains, we stacked shoes and clothing, and arrayed toys and lawn chairs. Rain glittered on sparkly red glitter shoes, and melted cardboard boxes. Under a damp white awning, we talked with strangers, neighbors, and church friends. Teens, siblings, and family members served side by side, next to slippery rain tarps and dripping eaves. In between the rains, we dried items, sold items, and then loaded four trucks of items to give away.

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This morning, I ground espresso coffee beans, and washed up the last dishes before my parents arrived. Rain fell heavy on the deck and yard. Soon two flood pools reflected back the sky in streets and yards.

Knocking and entering, my parents slid off shoes, passed out hugs, and pulled out seeds. "I brought the strawberry plants around to the back," Mom said, bending low for a four year old's conversation. My dad's shovels, rakes, and buckets lay ready on the front steps.

We drank black coffee, catching up on news, snacking on peanut butter-topped celery and oreos. Sunshine crossed the yard, splashing on to the deck and railings. We drained our coffee, grabbed hoes, and set out across raindrop-tipped dandelions. My mom planted strawberries, transplanted white shasta daisies, and weeded. My dad and I gathered shredded bark, rolled back faulty weed liners, and reinforced weed barriers in the landscape beds.

Hours passed quickly, and black dirt clung to our faces, knees, and hands. At one-thirty, under chilled grey storm-clouds that darkened the sky, we raced raindrops to finish. In seconds, we lost and, grabbing tools, ran laughing to the door. Later, we peered through wet windows to see beautiful garden beds and new life emerging.

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Emerging now after our last rainfall, I snap photos and crow excitedly over each new life. Tulips shine rain drop jewels next to swelling alium buds, pregnant with life. Radish buds crowd in lines, elbowing each other. Pea pods emerge tiny and curled, barely noticeable in the cracked earth. Mint plants weather fierce rains, slipping up to the light. And the ones that get me most? Vivid green raspberry leaves burst from dead twigs chomped to the ground by hungry deer and gophers last fall. The green life amazes and thrills me, surging unexpected from dormant sticks and hidden underground roots.

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Rains so often seem to halt activity, yet it is after the rains that I see the most vivid life.

Between the rains, life grows. From the rain, life grows.


Linking with Ann at A Holy Experience.