Here we are again – it’s Friday! And Lisa-Jo is back from her 3-week visit with family in South Africa and she’s given us a lovely prompt for today – here it is in her own words:

On Fridays around these parts we like to write. Not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

Full… 

GO:

To the brim today, that’s what full feels like. To the brim with gratitude, exhaustion, joy, celebration, connection, happy pride, all mixed together with some trepidation, uncertainty, unworthiness  and yes, I’ll name it – fear.

The happy-full feelings are the residue of a lovely weekend of wedding, a small miracle story in our family circle which I’ve written about here and here and yes, also here. {it took 3 to get all the photos in!} Such a sweet story, such a sweet day. My grateful heart sings with joy at this denouement to what was for so many years a story of sadness. And I am so grateful to and for my family, I cannot find the words. EVERYONE worked hard to make this story happen – from my 90-year-old mom to my brother and his wife to all my kids and their kids to a few good friends who are like family to us. It was a good, good time.

The anxious-full feelings come because today I begin a 2-week in residence training program on my way to becoming a spiritual director. The anxiety is not huge, but the uncertainty and perhaps…curiosity…are huge. I began going down this road in a completely different direction, so this part is new and I am full of wonderment about how I got here.

STOP

This is the third in a series of multiple posts about our family celebrations this past weekend. Please prepare yourselves for a whole lot of scrolling and tons of pictures in each one! I’m joining with Emily W at canvaschild, with Bonnie G at FaithBarista and with Ann V at AHolyExperience for their weekly invitation to share about our faith walk:

This is the second of what is turning out to be multiple posts about our family celebrations this past weekend. Please prepare yourselves for a whole lot of scrolling and tons of pictures in each one! I’m joining with Emily W at canvaschild, with Bonnie G at FaithBarista and with Ann V at AHolyExperience for their weekly invitation to share about our faith walk:

got those cupcakes frosted and decorated,

 

Wow. I have to admit that when I saw Lisa-Jo’s topic for this week – and read her own heart-rending story – I was stunned. At our house, I have multiple generations sleeping under our roof in preparation for a wonderful weekend of celebration. Our eldest daughter is getting married on Saturday and we’re hosting the rehearsal dinner here tomorrow. We’re printing programs and slicing bread and wrapping silverware in colorful napkins and getting ready to mark this milestone event in a lovely and unique way. But this day…this day comes after several years of pain, grief, chronic illness and heartbreak. This day is a gift of grace for our girl after so much suffering, suffering that is, quite literally, indescribable. So…five minutes on this topic just about makes me twist in a knot. I have no idea how it will play out in five minutes – just five minutes – no editing, no rewriting. 

But Lisa-Jo has given us grace this week- grace to take as long as we need. Let’s see how long that is.

GO:

It has been a long season of loss in our family. About eight years of death, illness, devastating natural events, and personal heartache. 

Loss has shown up in lots of ways:
     – from things that seem inconsequential in the larger scheme of things (like having a tooth pulled!);
     – to terrifying natural disasters (like two wildfires, requiring evacuation both times); 
     – to startling, gut-wrenching medical diagnoses (like prostate cancer, pulmonary emboli, Parkinson’s disease, alcohol-induced heart damage, Asperger’s syndrome, 5 days in the NICU, a 4-year-old’s broken femur, Alzheimer’s disease); 
     – to the long, slow, slogging kind of ultimate loss, the kind that happens when you are losing someone dear – bit by bit by bit, one agonizing piece at a time. 

And we’ve been down every one of those roads during these years, some of them multiple times. Every single one.

Perhaps I should not be surprised by the sad fact that in the midst of preparing for the festivities of the weekend ahead, I said out loud, “I hope I can remember how to ‘do’ happy.” 

Which is not to say that we haven’t experienced grace, respite, laughter, gratitude, redemption and Presence in and around each experience of loss. 

It is to say that these years have formed in us all, maybe most especially in me, a posture of leaning, leaning into God certainly – and that is a good thing. But also, a pattern of leaning into the stiffness of the wild wind – finding in myself an almost ingrained pattern of ‘bucking up,’ of standing tall and facing into whatever the heck comes.  Because a lot of crap has come down the pike and that’s what I’ve learned to do – to stand here, as steadily as my weak knees and trembling heart will allow – and say, “By the grace of God, I will survive. We will survive.” 

So (and believe me, this is taking one heckuva lot longer than 5 minutes to formulate!!) …this weekend, I hope we discover that we have not lost the capacity to truly celebrate. 

That we will be able to look at two people who are deeply in love, who are grateful every minute of every day that God has given them to each other and that we will find ourselves smiling from somewhere deep inside, saying: “Oh YES, God is good – all the time. All the time, God is good.” 

And to really, really mean it, from our toes right on up. 

After so many years of enduring, of bracing for yet another blow, another reminder that life is delicate, fragile and so SO easily lost, I am praying that during these days we can let loose the fears, the tears and the sadness that we all carry in our hearts and even in our bodies. That we can release that ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ feeling and just plain revel in the truth that something beautiful is right here in front of us. Something full of life, not death. Something full of promise, not loss. Something full of grace and beauty and wonder. 

We will experience loss again – this much I know. There is no escape. It is part of our story as human creatures on planet earth. But right now, right here – in the middle of this particular part of our family journey…there is the gift of celebration. Let the party begin!


STOP


This actually took about an hour to hammer out but I didn’t edit much – just tried to write. Each word hurt. But each word also began to break through that self-protective wall I too often hide behind. Maybe as I sleep this night and as I work around our house and yard tomorrow, and take ‘the girls’ for mani-pedis, and do my small piece in the wedding itself, and work with my husband and my kids and my grandkids to clean things up after the reception on Saturday – maybe that wall will just plain crumble on down.


Oh, and pray for our kids as they try to get outta Dodge for a honeymoon – carmageddon is happening between their house and the airport and they need a miracle to get them to their flight! How many of you had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to try and make a 9:00 o’clock flight the morning after your wedding??

I read Ian Cron’s blog today, just as I put my feet up for a few minutes, preparing for the wonderful weekend ahead. On Saturday evening, our daughter will marry a good man. It is her second wedding. The first was 24 years ago when she was all of 19, and they knew when they married that his life would be a shorter-than-usual one. He found his eternal home in Jesus almost three years ago and there was a lot of pain and loss in the process of his dying. So to see and to celebrate happiness just now is gift – that’s the only word for it.

And Mr. Cron wrote a brief beautiful word today about the grace of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and I remembered this post from about 18 months ago.  I’ve reworked it a tiny bit and it’s too long – but it speaks to some of the down-deep joy we are all feeling just now.  To the grace of our God, to the goodness of life experienced through good times and hard times and to the promise of God’s faithful presence through all of it.

Originally posted in early January, 2010, before my retirement at the end of that year:

 It’s been such a strange holiday season this year.
 

Through Katie Lloyd’s beautiful website, we are invited each week to submit one of our own photos, with a scripture verse that the photo elicits in us. Such a great idea and so fun to do.

Somewhere in the bloghopping I do, I came across a written reflection called, “I Am From…” Turns out the original is from a writer named George Ella Lyons and is based on a template suggested in a book called, “Where I’m From: a poetry workshop-book for teachers and students.” The template for this reflection can be found at http://www.swva.net/fred1st/wif.htm  This was tremendously interesting, fun and wistful to do and I urge anyone with a spare 3o minutes or so to check it out and give it a try.


I am linking with Charity Singleton’s project to promote community over at The High Calling called There and Back Again:

I’m also linking tonight with Bonnie Gray over at The Faith Barista for her weekly meme, which this week was about ‘whitespace.’  I took a little whitespace today, over a solitary lunch at Nordstrom’s Cafe, sitting on their patio and reading through the template for this reflection.  It was a rich time of remembering, of being grateful for my story and for God’s grace woven through it all.

I am from sidewalks, from Malt-O-Meal and Ovaltine;
I am from the dust of a brand-new backyard, ripe with
       horned toads and yellowing banana trees;
I am from calla lilies on the shady side of the house,
       from camellias and roses and fuschias, hanging low. 

I am from plum pudding and chickens in the yard,
       from Elsie and Pearl, short and tall, women of strength
       who found their way;
from Harry and Benjamin, broken men, who sometimes broke
       their children;
from Ruth and Ben, who took the best of all these and built a
       a home of love and learning and laughter. 

I am from too much worry about appearances, coupled with
       a deep desire for more of what is not seen;
From, “Beware the unguarded moment!” and “Oh, the beauty!
       The beauty!”
I am from old-time Methodism and communion at the rail
       and music that swirls and covers every ugly thing.
From memory work and sword drills and singing in the choir.
From strong preaching and too many rules and too much fear.
Yet I am also from honest questions, room for doubt and 
       good, deep thinking.
From C.S. Lewis and George Ladd and Paul Jewett and
       Henrietta Mears.
From ‘faggots on the fire,’ (1950’s speak for throwing twigs
       and giving testimony); and abstinence pledges made
       way too young.

I am from California by way of Arkansas and Canada;
from sour cream chocolate cake and chipped beef on toast.
From my father’s piano and my mother’s beauty,
       from tuberculosis and deep family feuds,
       from always learning, 
       from trying again, 
       from pushing deeper. 

In the cupboard, a brown bag filled with photos, old and 
       fading, and flowers pressed from long ago.
In the drawer, cherished jewelry, worth nothing more than
       the memories they carry.
I am from valiant stock, strong women and ever more 
       gentle men;
from love and hope, 
       faith and doubt, 
             curiosity and wonder:
all of it mixed together in some divine blender to give me this
       life, this gift, this heritage.

Have I told you our daughter is getting married next week?? (I talk about it here, pictures and all.) Our eldest, widowed for almost three years, has found a soul-mate for the 2nd half of life and we are all over the moon about it. So…life is a little bit crazy around here…and I CANNOT BELIEVE it is Friday again. Already. But here it is, and here is Lisa-Jo, faithful to this calling even from halfway around the world, as she relishes time with her family there. And those of us who follow her adventures are so thrilled that she has this 3-week stretch to enjoy the South African veldt where she grew up.  Check it out yourself at http://the gypsymama.com:

Want to take five minutes with me and just write without worrying if it’s just right or not. Here’s how we do it:
1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in {you can grab the button code in my right side bar}
3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard.

Grateful… 

GO:

Ah, what a word. Conjuring up so many images, so many pieces of my life. Gratitude is one of the strongest through-lines in my journey, a sense of wonder and awe, even in the midst of terrible pain at times, at the bounteous ways in which my life is blessed. Many people out in blogland are captivated by an invitation made online and in hard copy to ‘count the ways,’ thanks to Ann Voskamp’s amazing thinking, writing and photography. So I’m doing a bit of that myself just now, taking pictures and journaling a bit about how much of what I see around me is a source for blessing and encouragement. Even some of the hard stuff.

Family – 
strong husband, recovered from cancer, working in the yard until he’s covered with dirt;


beautiful daughters and daughter-in-law, who are strong and feisty and smart and deeply faithful;


tall son, who towers over most of us physically and mentally, but who loves his children and his wife so tenderly and well;
son-in-law (and one soon-to-be) who lean into partnership with joy and curiosity, with love and laughter and thoughtfulness.


grandchildren spanning 20 years who are growing and stretching toward the Light, asking good questions, learning to make good decisions, becoming unique and loving human persons;


a mom who struggles with remembering and understanding but whose smile lights up a room, whose spirit is indomitable and whose beauty still astounds people;


a home that I love and savor, like a true friend, a place of beauty and rest and solace and inspiration;


a life that is long and growing longer and lots more time to live it as the responsibilities that come with a working life shift away from us and onto others.


a God who is beyond my ken but close enough to breathe life into my sometimes tired soul and whose song of joy over me is more and more easily heard.


STOP
oops – went about 60 seconds too long… and pictures added after the STOP.

Later than I like to be this week, linking with LL Barkat and Laura Boggess at their kind invitation to speak to both ‘a sense of place’ and ‘a sense of play.’  My thanks to them both:

Monday was a quiet day for us.  Usually our national birthday is a time of noise and family and food, kids in the pool, marshmallows over the coals in the chiminea, way too many hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. 

But all our kids had other plans this year, and we found ourselves on our own for the first time in a while. So the house was still, the guest rooms were empty and … it was lovely. 

I slept in a little that morning, in this lovely room which has become a small retreat space all its own. The French doors just to the right of the bed face east, so the morning sun comes streaming in across the transom. Somehow this makes it tougher for my husband to stay abed later than about 7:15 or 7:30, even on a holiday, so he had long been up when I roused. 

And when I did rouse, I pulled up our woven blinds to let in as much light as possible, enjoying the sound of the fountain just outside the window, peering round to see the red bloom of the trumpet vine which lines the fence. A sunny day – something to be relished here on the central coast of California, where June gloom often creeps far into July.  The hot summer heat of the central valley draws in the fog from the sea, and it rests itself all along our peninsula for much of the summer. 

But Monday was glorious and clear, even warmer than it has been for a while. I opened the door to the yard, did a few of my usual daily ablutions and sat back into bed with my laptop open. I’ve been wrestling of late with the excessive amounts of time I find myself spending doing exactly this: sitting with my laptop open, reading blogs, making comments, trying to find my way in and around this amazing world, all the while hampered by some pretty poor technical skills and more than a little bit of confusion about how it all works, what is ‘polite’ and what is intrusive, what is helpful and what is too close to ‘lurking,’ trying to understand what the truly orthodox liturgy is in this new world.

I’ve had a blog for a long time now.  But I haven’t really written on it much until this year. There are a few personal reflections spread here and there, but after getting badly burned by one of those during a tender and difficult time for our family, I pulled way back from that kind of writing. Instead, I used this space to post sermons and public prayers.  After all, the blog had been opened at the request of my boss at the time, who is a techno guy and urged us as a staff to join him in the blogosphere.  So…sermons and prayers…sufficient, non-controversial, only as personal as any publicly spoken words are personal. Safe. Like this shy oriole who flits about our yard every spring and summer, I hid in the brush out here in the far western reaches of north America, choosing to keep things tidy, non-threatening, circumspect. 

Then came retirement – and this increasing sense of urgency about writing.  Just writing – about life, family, faith, doubt, death, aging, dementia, suffering, joy, beauty – but doing it more personally, more identifiably in my own voice… something I am still in process of discovering. And this kind of writing feels a whole lot less safe. In fact, it sometimes feels downright dangerous. 

That urge to write less safely, more openly, led quite naturally to reading – lots and lots of reading – other people’s blogs, community blogs (like ezines), blogs about blogs, blogs summarizing blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs. By Independence Day I was feeling increasingly DEpendent upon this time with the laptop, this need to figure out how — if I actually did find my voice — to create a space to be heard. I became more than a little bit obsessive about how to do it right, how to ‘grow the blog.’ Which is why I posted a bit about that whole struggle earlier this week with this post on what to do when you can’t sleep.

So. Monday morning, I was just sitting here, doing my usual sorting through about one hundred email subscriptions to a wide variety of blogs, hunting for any meager indication that anyone was actually reading anything that I’ve written, when I stopped for just a minute and looked up. Just outside my large window – the one we laid out very exactly so that the gingko tree we love could be saved – I caught a glimpse of bright yellow in the lime green shrub that is almost out of my view from this vantage point on my bed. An oriole! 

I have tried for the last three or four years to capture a decent photographic image of these birds. But they are very sensitive to movement and excessively shy, so it’s been tough sledding. I knew my larger camera was in the house, instead of it’s usual perch on the back seat of my car, so I carefully got up, found the telephoto lens and sat down very slowly on the end of the bed. And I got four shots before he heard the click of the shutter and disappeared from view.

Is he not the most gorgeous thing? Those of you living in other parts of this continent where all sorts of birds migrate in and out may think I’m more than a little bonkers to rave about a yellow bird.  And maybe I am. But we see these birds so seldom around here. Their color, their markings, their behavior – all of it is somehow exotic and captivating – something very out of the ordinary, a spot of beauty that is often elusive and nearly irresistible. We can hear their machine-gun-like rat-a-tat-tat far more often than we can ever catch a glimpse of their vibrant feathers, so each time we do, it’s a bit like a siren call.  Where is he hiding this time? Come out, come out, wherever you are…

It’s beginning to feel like it’s time for me to come out of hiding. I’ve spent a good bit of my time, both as a wife and mother and as a pastor, encouraging others to relish who they are, to take risks, to speak their own truth, to step into their gifts, to partner with God in doing the kind of kingdom work that only they can do. Do I believe this for myself?

I am discovering that as your life circumstances change, your ‘own truth’ changes right along with them. Retirement gives me a smidge more freedom to say things and write things and ponder things aloud than being a stay-at-home-mom or a staff pastor ever did or could. And I loved being both of those things. I am beginning to believe that I will also love being retired, for a good long list of reasons – headed this week by the freedom to sit in my nightgown and take pictures of a transitory thing of beauty in my own backyard.