There’s a nudging in the heart for the good ol’ days. Those times we spent together as children, when the world was bright and innocent. The memories that remain from those early years have a softer glow about them, like film from an 8mm camera. Grainy at the edges. Yellowed with time. Sweetened with age.
I remember how I used to crawl into my sister’s bed when the night closed in too dark around me. When the dreams haunted me. When monsters threatened to bite. My little feet would creep across the hall and lift me up beside her; hide me beneath her coverlet. There I would fall asleep, dreamless. Safe beside her.
Those were the good ol’ days.
We used to play in that cabin at the edge of our yard. Daddy had built it with boards and shingles the summer I grew in my mother’s belly. We’d imagine ourselves as Mary and Laura Ingles, growing up on the vast prairie of our imaginations. On warm nights I’d have a sleepover in the loft with my closest friend from down the street. We’d prop open the cabin door and watch the stars, talking through the night. Innocence rang out in our bubbling laughter.
Those were the good ol’days.
Christmases around a sparkling tree.
Dinners around a small, laminate kitchen table.
School mornings waiting on the front steps for the bus.
Mommy in her fuzzy slippers with a steaming cup of coffee.
A ditch that imagined itself a grand creek, full of summer adventures for a small child.
A black and white dog playing fetch in the yard.
Those were the good ol’ days.
They were.
But it occurs to me whenever I am watching five little pairs of bare feet traipsing across the yard, on an adventure of their own, that these are the good ol’ days too.
Every time I’ve had the gift of looking down into a newborn baby’s wondering eyes. Or nestled a sleeping toddler into his bed. Or played a game of kickball in the backyard with a small tribe of laughing children. Or kissed the man I love at the end of a full day.
These are the good ol’ days.
The days rich with memory, golden with beauty.
I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to store it all away – precious treasures – for later. I want to look back when I am old in my bed and know that I did not waste a single minute; I did not wish any of it away or long for other days. Though many days the work is hard, and though grief may creep in from time to time, one day I want to look down at wrinkled hands and know that they worked hard, and loved well, and cherished every gift.
May 28, 2012
Apr 13, 2012
Time
Time is a mysterious thing.
It is the ebb and flow of the universe. The pulsing of life.
Elusive yet definable.
It is the shallow breath in my lungs and the fluttering rhythm in my chest.
It is the sun rising and setting in its course.
Tender shoots sprouting from the earth. Trees blooming then laying themselves bare again.
Stars rotating above this blue and green orb like streaks of fire in the black velvet sky.
Time.
It is a human constraint too, a frame of reference.
Clocks spinning. Numbers changing.
An attempt to explain what is slipping away from us - that which is brief and unable to be retained by human hands.
The one thing we can never get back again.
Time is history; the end of one era and the beginning of another.
It is the rising and falling of empires.
And it is also the sweet intimacy of a little girl’s arms wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Mommy, you have to come see! It’s a cardinal!”
“Really?” I smile down at her.
“Come see it! Hurry!” She races from the kitchen to the dining room.
But I get caught up. I truly intend to go and see that cardinal. I couldn’t even tell you what interrupts me from going and enjoying that moment of simple wonder with her. Someone needing something from me; a momentary emergency, perhaps. But a few minutes later I am passing down the hall and I see her frame in the front window. Her face is turned toward the yard.
“You missed it,” she says, looking back at me with a rueful smile. “It flew away.”
It is the ebb and flow of the universe. The pulsing of life.
Elusive yet definable.
It is the shallow breath in my lungs and the fluttering rhythm in my chest.
It is the sun rising and setting in its course.
Tender shoots sprouting from the earth. Trees blooming then laying themselves bare again.
Stars rotating above this blue and green orb like streaks of fire in the black velvet sky.
Time.
It is a human constraint too, a frame of reference.
Clocks spinning. Numbers changing.
An attempt to explain what is slipping away from us - that which is brief and unable to be retained by human hands.
The one thing we can never get back again.
Time is history; the end of one era and the beginning of another.
It is the rising and falling of empires.
And it is also the sweet intimacy of a little girl’s arms wrapped tightly around my waist.
“Mommy, you have to come see! It’s a cardinal!”
“Really?” I smile down at her.
“Come see it! Hurry!” She races from the kitchen to the dining room.
But I get caught up. I truly intend to go and see that cardinal. I couldn’t even tell you what interrupts me from going and enjoying that moment of simple wonder with her. Someone needing something from me; a momentary emergency, perhaps. But a few minutes later I am passing down the hall and I see her frame in the front window. Her face is turned toward the yard.
“You missed it,” she says, looking back at me with a rueful smile. “It flew away.”
Mar 31, 2012
Enough
The kitchen looks like a bomb went off. Dishes are everywhere. The counters are nowhere to be seen. The little ones are clamoring for me.
Mommy…mommy...
There are five of them, but those younger three have been bickering since they opened their eyes this morning. And I feel like my head is going to explode.
One of them has had an accident in the bathroom. The family room floor is strewn with toys. There’s a heap of towels and sheets in the hall outside the laundry room and a mountain of clothes on our bedroom floor. A pile of backdrops sit waiting to be painted for a children’s play I’m supposed to be producing, and a list a mile long is demanding my attention… (somewhere).
Props that need finding and costumes that need making. Lesson plans that need writing and church classes that need preparing.
I was fortunate enough to remember it was dinner time and that I needed to put something on the table. But that is an unusual occurrence – the remembering part. Usually it’s 4:58 and I suddenly realize I have no plan.
Oh yes! Food! (Have I eaten anything today other than Jovan’s crust of sandwich bread?)
I am moving inside of a hurricane. At least it feels that way.
Most of the time this job feels overwhelming. And I often find myself thinking, I’m not cut out for this. I’m doing a horrible job. Those words follow me around, day in and day out, like a shadow of disgrace cast on my back and a heavy weight of guilt in my heart.
I am not enough.
I will never be enough for this.
Well, I found myself at a breaking point today. Actually, that’s wrong. I think I’ve always lived there and it’s just that sometimes I look around and realize where I’ve set up camp.
But this particular night, I felt myself on the verge of tears.
And then the phone rang.
A shaky, tired voice says my name on the other line. I hardly recognize it until she says her name, amidst the screams of a toddler hanging on my leg. I break free from the chaos and I find a quiet place behind a closed door. I want to hear this voice I haven’t heard in many years. I want to know if everything’s alright.
“I’m in the hospital. I’ve just had surgery. Oh, but that’s not why I called,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
She assures me she’s fine when I press her.
“I was thinking of you just the other day too,” my voice waivers. “I was thinking about that summer we spent together. How special it was to me.”
There was nowhere for me to go back then. I wasn’t old enough to stay home all day every day by myself. And school was out. My dad would leave at sunrise for his long commute to work. I would get myself up and dressed, and have a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table by myself. A key hung around my neck on a black chord because I often came and went from an empty house.
A latchkey kid.
Sometimes I’d be playing in the back yard when her car pulled into the driveway. She would call my name. I’d come running. And she would take me home with her.
We spent many long days together that summer, me and my mom’s old friend. We went on errands. She showed me how to cook, how to do things around the house. And we often went out for ice cream at her favorite place. Nearly every day, if I recall. Just the two of us.
She loved to be silly. She loved to laugh. At a time when I needed to remember how to laugh.
She talked with me.
She nurtured me.
And I have never forgotten it.
“I just wanted to tell you,” she says affectionately into the receiver. “That your mom would be so proud of you. And that I love you.”
My throat catches. Because I realize as she is speaking, that I know intimately the love of a Heavenly Father who does not leave his children alone.
I am enough.
I will always be enough, He reminds me.
Sometimes we need an audible voice from God. And sometimes He uses one to reach us.
Mommy…mommy...
There are five of them, but those younger three have been bickering since they opened their eyes this morning. And I feel like my head is going to explode.
One of them has had an accident in the bathroom. The family room floor is strewn with toys. There’s a heap of towels and sheets in the hall outside the laundry room and a mountain of clothes on our bedroom floor. A pile of backdrops sit waiting to be painted for a children’s play I’m supposed to be producing, and a list a mile long is demanding my attention… (somewhere).
Props that need finding and costumes that need making. Lesson plans that need writing and church classes that need preparing.
I was fortunate enough to remember it was dinner time and that I needed to put something on the table. But that is an unusual occurrence – the remembering part. Usually it’s 4:58 and I suddenly realize I have no plan.
Oh yes! Food! (Have I eaten anything today other than Jovan’s crust of sandwich bread?)
I am moving inside of a hurricane. At least it feels that way.
Most of the time this job feels overwhelming. And I often find myself thinking, I’m not cut out for this. I’m doing a horrible job. Those words follow me around, day in and day out, like a shadow of disgrace cast on my back and a heavy weight of guilt in my heart.
I am not enough.
I will never be enough for this.
Well, I found myself at a breaking point today. Actually, that’s wrong. I think I’ve always lived there and it’s just that sometimes I look around and realize where I’ve set up camp.
But this particular night, I felt myself on the verge of tears.
And then the phone rang.
A shaky, tired voice says my name on the other line. I hardly recognize it until she says her name, amidst the screams of a toddler hanging on my leg. I break free from the chaos and I find a quiet place behind a closed door. I want to hear this voice I haven’t heard in many years. I want to know if everything’s alright.
“I’m in the hospital. I’ve just had surgery. Oh, but that’s not why I called,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
She assures me she’s fine when I press her.
“I was thinking of you just the other day too,” my voice waivers. “I was thinking about that summer we spent together. How special it was to me.”
There was nowhere for me to go back then. I wasn’t old enough to stay home all day every day by myself. And school was out. My dad would leave at sunrise for his long commute to work. I would get myself up and dressed, and have a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table by myself. A key hung around my neck on a black chord because I often came and went from an empty house.
A latchkey kid.
Sometimes I’d be playing in the back yard when her car pulled into the driveway. She would call my name. I’d come running. And she would take me home with her.
We spent many long days together that summer, me and my mom’s old friend. We went on errands. She showed me how to cook, how to do things around the house. And we often went out for ice cream at her favorite place. Nearly every day, if I recall. Just the two of us.
She loved to be silly. She loved to laugh. At a time when I needed to remember how to laugh.
She talked with me.
She nurtured me.
And I have never forgotten it.
“I just wanted to tell you,” she says affectionately into the receiver. “That your mom would be so proud of you. And that I love you.”
My throat catches. Because I realize as she is speaking, that I know intimately the love of a Heavenly Father who does not leave his children alone.
I am enough.
I will always be enough, He reminds me.
Sometimes we need an audible voice from God. And sometimes He uses one to reach us.
Mar 10, 2012
Things Only Heaven Can Fix (Part Five)
…
He is gone now.
And if I could truly convey the depths of his account, I would impress upon you the burden with which he lived his life. The abuses, the tragedies and the damages done to his body and mind were immense. In turn, the brokenness and heartache he passed on to others cannot be undone in this temporal world. That is all that needs to be known in order to understand the end.
Or, perhaps… I should call it the beginning.
We visited him three times before he died. And during that last visit, my father had a few moments alone with him. I watched from the hallway, through a crack in the door, as they talked.
This is the image I want to keep of him, and bury all the rest:
He is propped up in his hospital bed. Tears fill his eyes. The cancer is ravaging him, but he still has the strength to speak. At his bedside sits my father, hunched over, holding his wrinkled hand. I cannot hear the words being spoken between them, but I know they impart repentance. And forgiveness. This man has spoken the name of Jesus for most of his life, but he has never quite understood the power therein. My eyes, peering intently into the splinter of light, behold redemption. I catch a small glimpse of the scandalous grace that is the gospel.
The grace that changes and washes all else away.
He took his last breath, alone in that room, just a couple days later. The bed sat empty for a time. The whiteboard on the door, blank. His name, erased.
Wiped clean.
The government claimed his body and buried him in a veteran’s cemetery. It was the last thing bestowed to him on this earth. A plot of dirt for his sacrifices in Vietnam.
Dirt.
That was the best this world had to offer him.
And though he left this place an empty, broken man, he also left clinging with all he had to something greater than himself. Someone greater. Greater than everything that had ever been done to him and greater than everything he had ever done: Jesus.
When he slipped out of that lonely room, he passed into another one that was echoing with multitudes, rejoicing and praising that Greater One who won the battle none of them could win.
I suppose, in a way, I am still standing in the hallway. Waiting. Only having seen a glimpse of redemption through a crack in the door. There is healing in the other room and I long to partake in it.
I will. One day.
But of this I am certain: He was something that only heaven could fix.
And perhaps I have come to realize with clearer understanding that I am too.
He is gone now.
And if I could truly convey the depths of his account, I would impress upon you the burden with which he lived his life. The abuses, the tragedies and the damages done to his body and mind were immense. In turn, the brokenness and heartache he passed on to others cannot be undone in this temporal world. That is all that needs to be known in order to understand the end.
Or, perhaps… I should call it the beginning.
We visited him three times before he died. And during that last visit, my father had a few moments alone with him. I watched from the hallway, through a crack in the door, as they talked.
This is the image I want to keep of him, and bury all the rest:
He is propped up in his hospital bed. Tears fill his eyes. The cancer is ravaging him, but he still has the strength to speak. At his bedside sits my father, hunched over, holding his wrinkled hand. I cannot hear the words being spoken between them, but I know they impart repentance. And forgiveness. This man has spoken the name of Jesus for most of his life, but he has never quite understood the power therein. My eyes, peering intently into the splinter of light, behold redemption. I catch a small glimpse of the scandalous grace that is the gospel.
The grace that changes and washes all else away.
He took his last breath, alone in that room, just a couple days later. The bed sat empty for a time. The whiteboard on the door, blank. His name, erased.
Wiped clean.
The government claimed his body and buried him in a veteran’s cemetery. It was the last thing bestowed to him on this earth. A plot of dirt for his sacrifices in Vietnam.
Dirt.
That was the best this world had to offer him.
And though he left this place an empty, broken man, he also left clinging with all he had to something greater than himself. Someone greater. Greater than everything that had ever been done to him and greater than everything he had ever done: Jesus.
When he slipped out of that lonely room, he passed into another one that was echoing with multitudes, rejoicing and praising that Greater One who won the battle none of them could win.
I suppose, in a way, I am still standing in the hallway. Waiting. Only having seen a glimpse of redemption through a crack in the door. There is healing in the other room and I long to partake in it.
I will. One day.
But of this I am certain: He was something that only heaven could fix.
And perhaps I have come to realize with clearer understanding that I am too.
Feb 16, 2012
Things Only Heaven Can Fix (Part Four)
…
The sun beats down on the hood of the tan station wagon as she pulls into the parking lot. The car seats are sticky. Air conditioning is blasting through her short, dark hair. She reaches across the passenger seat to grab her purse.
And a box.
Someone in a uniform takes her money and weighs the carton. She sticks the postage onto the corner and writes down her own address. Above that, she writes my name. And when that package arrives at our door in a couple of days she will lie and tell me it’s from someone else.
I never knew her as a woman. I will never have an adult conversation with her about motherhood or marriage. I’ll never get to ask her my hard questions.
I only knew her as a child. Part of me wonders if, because of that, I never really knew her at all.
But now I am a mother too. And I understand the fierce love that abides in the deep recesses of a mother’s heart.
I know why she did what she did on that summer day. And if it were possible to love her more for it, I do.
It’s twenty-five years later. The gift that was packed inside that brown box is broken and gone. It is ashes and dust. But there was another gift inside. I am discovering it now. One that has traversed time to reach me. One that doesn’t waste away.
I sip from a steaming cup, looking through a window at brightly colored leaves. The house is quiet and I am lost in thought.
There are no accidents. And though his coming back into my life had felt like a haunting, I am strangely at peace.
I am glad I asked him that tentative question, and I am content with his honest answer that hurt for a moment but exposed the truth.
A breeze pushes through the spindly oak in our back yard. It surrenders its precious few leaves, red paper that will turn to brown and feed the earth with its sacrifice.
The time is coming for giving thanks.
And I find myself deeply thankful.
…
The sun beats down on the hood of the tan station wagon as she pulls into the parking lot. The car seats are sticky. Air conditioning is blasting through her short, dark hair. She reaches across the passenger seat to grab her purse.
And a box.
Someone in a uniform takes her money and weighs the carton. She sticks the postage onto the corner and writes down her own address. Above that, she writes my name. And when that package arrives at our door in a couple of days she will lie and tell me it’s from someone else.
I never knew her as a woman. I will never have an adult conversation with her about motherhood or marriage. I’ll never get to ask her my hard questions.
I only knew her as a child. Part of me wonders if, because of that, I never really knew her at all.
But now I am a mother too. And I understand the fierce love that abides in the deep recesses of a mother’s heart.
I know why she did what she did on that summer day. And if it were possible to love her more for it, I do.
It’s twenty-five years later. The gift that was packed inside that brown box is broken and gone. It is ashes and dust. But there was another gift inside. I am discovering it now. One that has traversed time to reach me. One that doesn’t waste away.
I sip from a steaming cup, looking through a window at brightly colored leaves. The house is quiet and I am lost in thought.
There are no accidents. And though his coming back into my life had felt like a haunting, I am strangely at peace.
I am glad I asked him that tentative question, and I am content with his honest answer that hurt for a moment but exposed the truth.
A breeze pushes through the spindly oak in our back yard. It surrenders its precious few leaves, red paper that will turn to brown and feed the earth with its sacrifice.
The time is coming for giving thanks.
And I find myself deeply thankful.
…
Feb 9, 2012
Things Only Heaven Can Fix (Part Three)
…
He speaks with unnatural ease, as though nothing is the matter. As though he is simply regarding the weather and not what has happened to our loved ones.
Ones I will never see again in this temporal world.
“I had her laid next to your grandfather in the veteran’s cemetery.”
On a scrap of paper an address is written. I watch shaky hands writing numbers and letters that may guide us back to her one day. Or at least to a stone with her name on it.
I was not there when she took her last breath. I was not there when they placed her body in the ground.
And I hate him for this.
Why did you do it? Why? I want to scream. I want to wring my hands around his neck, though outwardly I listen to his rambling explanations and details. How he dragged her across the country. From state to state, like one in hiding. How he tried to care for her himself, though she was elderly and he was not capable.
None of it makes sense. His mind is drenched in paranoia. His thoughts are like secrets whispered in shadows.
I am weary. I want to leave. And I never want to come back again. But he is the keeper of the story. He has locked in his mind a million images of my mother that I long to see, images he will take to the grave with him if he does not give them away. And so I ask him to tell me the things I don’t know. Tell me the stories she would have told me.
He slips into story and memory, like a song the heart knows. And I find myself softening as I listen. It soothes some aching part of me to know these things I’ve never heard. A puzzle piece found and put in place.
“Do you remember that gift?” I ask him tentatively, a chink in my armor showing. “The one you sent for my birthday? The one that was my favorite?”
I am a small girl tearing at the packaging tape on a big brown box. Pure joy rushes through my veins because it isn’t often that a box so big comes for a person so small. Mommy stands beside me, watching, with a smile on her face.
No. He doesn’t recall.
“I didn’t send that.” The corner of his mouth curls. “She must have sent that to you.”
…
He speaks with unnatural ease, as though nothing is the matter. As though he is simply regarding the weather and not what has happened to our loved ones.
Ones I will never see again in this temporal world.
“I had her laid next to your grandfather in the veteran’s cemetery.”
On a scrap of paper an address is written. I watch shaky hands writing numbers and letters that may guide us back to her one day. Or at least to a stone with her name on it.
I was not there when she took her last breath. I was not there when they placed her body in the ground.
And I hate him for this.
Why did you do it? Why? I want to scream. I want to wring my hands around his neck, though outwardly I listen to his rambling explanations and details. How he dragged her across the country. From state to state, like one in hiding. How he tried to care for her himself, though she was elderly and he was not capable.
None of it makes sense. His mind is drenched in paranoia. His thoughts are like secrets whispered in shadows.
I am weary. I want to leave. And I never want to come back again. But he is the keeper of the story. He has locked in his mind a million images of my mother that I long to see, images he will take to the grave with him if he does not give them away. And so I ask him to tell me the things I don’t know. Tell me the stories she would have told me.
He slips into story and memory, like a song the heart knows. And I find myself softening as I listen. It soothes some aching part of me to know these things I’ve never heard. A puzzle piece found and put in place.
“Do you remember that gift?” I ask him tentatively, a chink in my armor showing. “The one you sent for my birthday? The one that was my favorite?”
I am a small girl tearing at the packaging tape on a big brown box. Pure joy rushes through my veins because it isn’t often that a box so big comes for a person so small. Mommy stands beside me, watching, with a smile on her face.
No. He doesn’t recall.
“I didn’t send that.” The corner of his mouth curls. “She must have sent that to you.”
…
Feb 2, 2012
Things Only Heaven Can Fix (Part Two)
…
A man is hunched there on his bed. His chest is sunken in. His cheeks hollowed. Hair, white.
The last time I saw him it was black. That’s how many years it has been. Time and cancer have whittled him away. But I know this man.
I still know him.
His bearded face turns toward us. And I look into familiar eyes, the same pools of black that peered so attentively at me in that other hospital. Twenty-one years ago. His lips were the ones that uttered those words I cannot forget. The words that changed my life. His face is my vivid memory of that moment. And I have wished many times since then that it was not.
I used to crane my neck to look up at him; he was so much bigger than me. Now I look down on him. Is it wrong that I find some kind of power in this?
So many thoughts, so many emotions, spinning around inside. It’s confusing. Disorienting. What was once adoration has been smothered by hurt.
I feel my teeth clench though I will myself to bend down and hug him. He manages to weakly acknowledge me. But even that feels like rejection all over again.
You were all I had left of her, the one my world revolved around. And you stole that from me. You killed her a second time. The fragile remnants that were left, you obliterated.
I am a small child again, running through a crowd. My hand has slipped from hers. I’d only looked away for a brief moment and she vanished. I am running. Pushing. Frantic to find her. Frightened, as only a child can be.
Lost.
Perhaps it is then that I realize how my identity and my personhood are so tightly intertwined with hers.
And suddenly it is as if there are two rooms. I stand in one. And he in another. I cannot see her but I know she is there. In the other room. Out of reach.
He stands at the door. He looks at me.
And he closes it.
I weep and wail. I bang on the door. But there is no answer. He will never open it. The other room is impenetrable.
And she is gone.
“What took you so long?” He asked, his dark eyes judging our intentions. “I thought you’d be here hours ago.”
I look at my lap, my legs bent rigidly over the seat of the visitor’s chair. I had thought you’d be here years ago.
Bitterness rises, but I swallow it down. And in its place comes a desperate question.
…
A man is hunched there on his bed. His chest is sunken in. His cheeks hollowed. Hair, white.
The last time I saw him it was black. That’s how many years it has been. Time and cancer have whittled him away. But I know this man.
I still know him.
His bearded face turns toward us. And I look into familiar eyes, the same pools of black that peered so attentively at me in that other hospital. Twenty-one years ago. His lips were the ones that uttered those words I cannot forget. The words that changed my life. His face is my vivid memory of that moment. And I have wished many times since then that it was not.
I used to crane my neck to look up at him; he was so much bigger than me. Now I look down on him. Is it wrong that I find some kind of power in this?
So many thoughts, so many emotions, spinning around inside. It’s confusing. Disorienting. What was once adoration has been smothered by hurt.
I feel my teeth clench though I will myself to bend down and hug him. He manages to weakly acknowledge me. But even that feels like rejection all over again.
You were all I had left of her, the one my world revolved around. And you stole that from me. You killed her a second time. The fragile remnants that were left, you obliterated.
I am a small child again, running through a crowd. My hand has slipped from hers. I’d only looked away for a brief moment and she vanished. I am running. Pushing. Frantic to find her. Frightened, as only a child can be.
Lost.
Perhaps it is then that I realize how my identity and my personhood are so tightly intertwined with hers.
And suddenly it is as if there are two rooms. I stand in one. And he in another. I cannot see her but I know she is there. In the other room. Out of reach.
He stands at the door. He looks at me.
And he closes it.
I weep and wail. I bang on the door. But there is no answer. He will never open it. The other room is impenetrable.
And she is gone.
“What took you so long?” He asked, his dark eyes judging our intentions. “I thought you’d be here hours ago.”
I look at my lap, my legs bent rigidly over the seat of the visitor’s chair. I had thought you’d be here years ago.
Bitterness rises, but I swallow it down. And in its place comes a desperate question.
…
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