heavy

it's been a week, my ring resting on the window sill above the sink. days have been spent washing dishes and laundry, and the ring was put aside for safekeeping and skin protecting. i slipped it back on and bought paper plates this week--my desire for sparkling reminder outweighed my Eco-conciousness.
we hold hands this week often, weighed by heavy thoughts, and talk about jobs and mothers and prayer and fear.
our newly wed love simmered like indian food i taught him to like, piquant and saucy. or like too-long shopping trips just because we could, and spent too much money on too little food. or like our long, meandering drives with nowhere to go and tank full of gas, counting the miles in conversations.
today's love looks like night-times not entangled in sheets but a pint-size baby overtaking a king-size bed and a trip to the grocery becomes my day away, and a cart is loaded while a purse is diminished, but we still drive to talk, fingers grazing over gear shifter and penny trays, little boy conversations trickling over our shoulders.

this has been a long week with heart-wrecking conversations and monumental decisions. i would appreciate any prayers if you think of us.

Rainbow math

it's late with no clock to whisper the time or day.

with one hand i stroke his cheek, dispelling the myth that there is no room for intimacy after babies. i love his day-old scruff, stroke his hair, corner-smile at the little kisses he plants on my nape.

with my other hand i curl owen towards me, make sure he's still sleeping, only to prove the myth after all. i am close enough to still smell his shampooed hair, and his toes dig into my ribs (again); my smile turns full at the wonder of being surrounded by my loves.

it's a working of math, for this word-girl: the at once mother and at the same time lover, how i never really stop being either.

i drift to sleep thinking, white is the sum of all colors.

How roses encore

i don't know if it's because of the breed (is that the right word?)or because of zone 7/8, but my long-neglected rosebush is blooming again, the brilliant fuchsia oxymoron to the first of november. i'm sure the last petals will fall with the first frost, yet i, too, thought august had drained the final blossoms of my tired bush.
i guess it still burns.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

when we met, he told me he'd been wandering the desert for a while, doing anything to shake the lushness of the gospel, choosing to sunburn under atheism, agnosticism, pragmatism, humanism, and logic's prickly harshness. but even then, when vultures watched with hawking cries, he couldn't run away from the Whisperer, the gospel written deeply in his heart even as he ran from familiar doorposts.
i guess it still burned.

~~~~~~~~~~~

do you know how mysteries unravel and solve themselves about 20 pages til the end and you finally see the pattern, begin to know whodunnit? this, an analogy that breaks down in the face of true mystery, the One with mysterious ways, whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Shea's memory verse (chosen oh-so-"randomly" for him; i thought it would be a good lesson for him when really it was a lesson for us): and we know he has worked all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (romans 8:28).

i watched his faith unravel for a season. held my fear so closely i couldn't even share it here. i was too afraid that giving voice would give fervent reality (as if i could create with my voice!!!). then, a warming, a spark, and i was afraid to breathe, afraid to blow it out (as if i could puff out the breath that breathed us out!!!). and then life shattered a bit, and all those worries seemed realized: the bitterness, the fist clenched towards God, the too-easy fall into frustration and despair. i was blessed with eyes to see, but no way to help his vision.

today his knuckles are loosened. his eyes have adjusted (from the mirror, darkly), and he senses the Bigger-than-he-is quotient. i breathe out murmured praise and choose to believe out loud this time, and hold fast. my lover has been woo'd again to the Beloved, and while there will certainly be ravines in the mud, i'm so happy to pray with my husband again, to hear his heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it doesn't seem so odd anymore, the blazing pink in the chilly air.
He burns.

How patience is sexy

he told me once how he used to hunker down, ashamed by height and breadth--til the day he held his firstborn and knew his shoulders were meant for this all along.
~~~~~~~~~

today he held connor, the one i'd pushed away several times because of the boy whirl-wind and impish antics. the one who trampled nerves already frayed and mamamamamama'd the ears overstimulated.
~~~~~~~~

connor says, "i love you," and i say, "i love you, too, baby," but does he hear without hands?

and daddy just picks him up, full of patience. patience despite all the traits, antics, touch, noise that undoes me.
i fall in love with my green-eyed man holding my blue-eyed boy. this man is patient with me, too, filling in the gaps where i am short, hunkered down in selfish "i can't do this anymore!"

so that when house is quiet (ok, it's not all that quiet, connor's wheezy breathing snoring through walls and pele's collar clanking with itching dream twitches and the muted honking din of city streets)
we collide in grace, parents holding our babies' hearts, lovers holding each others' hands.

The beauty that surrounds

there is a beauty that surrounds me,
(even when i overlook it.)
there are some days i forget to walk outside,
so fail to see how green comes in ten shades, just on ivy road.
or, how smart and wily the backyard birds are,
arrogantly eating the dog's food,
fluttering away with a taunting second to spare.

we return to play, now that heat is not so oppressive.
maybe now that we have more work to do?
the boys are more outside than in,
though the flies are more inside than out;
we dizzy in the middle, hap'ly.

my house has probably never been messier,
but why clean up the forts
and sweep away the dragon's lairs?

owen grows fat on mama's milk;
i blossom in his honey smiles,
us: making liars of canaan's promise.

this home i make in beds unmade
and arms entwined (yes, love is made, too)
surrounds me in beauty
i often overlook, but can't wait to see

Sabbath calling

i just wanted today to look differently than yesterday, i said as we argued through those leaps and bounds from the original 'complaint.' i wanted lunch to be with four hands, owen held and diapers changed and to feel teamwork once again. tears trickle out their frustration, and i secretly beg him to understand. can a saturday feel like a break for a mama at home all week? she whose job sleeps in her arms at night, suckling through the waning darkness, whose little bosses require multi-tasking and imagination all at the same time? and i know he knows, for he works Out There and comes home to wife all rumpled, cross-legged on couch in pj's, and he swoops in to hold babies and be jungle gym and freely offers bottle and ordered pizza. but our saturdays have rolled in like mondays, just a day older for baby and another one with split shifts and 4 boys all-at-once.

we hug tightly, kiss deeply, our fears and frustrations all mixing with oxygen and apologies, and somehow we know to just keep trying, know that things will even out, and we're going to be okay.

later, scrubbing dishes, white bubbles serving tenure to swish, swish, rinse, i hear His voice: will tomorrow look differently than today?
all my sundays have looked like mondays and wednesdays, and how would anyone ever know there was a sabbath if only watching me? i have not worshipped in a house, have not put down my work to rest, have hardly let prayers leave my lips nor raised hands in silent desperation. oh, i'm saved, a wrecked soul redeemed, but how could sabbath be different for this child?

i still didn't go to church today. there are a million excuses, always. and yes, i know my work of love and home-tending do much to honor Him, yet, i have been alone for a long time. i am reminded of the need for sisters and brothers with fellowship-skin, touch that heals and gives, space to worship out loud and to hear truth. this is a hard season of all kinds of limbos, the will-he-need-to-nurse, the war of anxious child in nursery, the task of getting out-of-doors in one piece let alone with matching socks.....

dishes are done. day is almost done. owen is bouncing. shea and connor are not-sleeping. avery is dreaming by now. and i... i am praying in repentence for forsaking the body so long and grateful that there will be Sabbath.

Inhale their belonging

i sniff deeply behind his tiny ears and i inhale the scent of eight weeks:
johnson and johnson and milk that has dribbled and hair matted from deep baby sleep

my older boys smell of earth and sweat and summer-scraped knees
or, fresh from bath, like lavender whispers.

and his smell is my deep secret--my heaven on earth, for his is marked by
laundry detergent, deodorant, and the breath of kisses

i breathe these men in deeply, inhale their belonging

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
i hope i smell more than just unshowered and like last night's dinner;
i want tiny ones to sense in me a love that gazes long and prays hard
and i want my beloved to know my scent on the wind, home(where the heart is).

Windows and resurrection

i asked for his help--i could tell he was waiting up for me, and task-oriented, i was trying to hurry through just the next few steps to a "good" quitting point. we laughed at my non-spatially wired brain and the fact that my method had prolonged my measuring and cutting the fabric. i asked if he'd help cut the last few strips with me; two pairs of scissors staring at me ready, and only at the end of the night had i thought to ask for his help. giving instructions to cut on this line, leave that fabric there, we snipped side by side and wordless, til hesitantly i asked, "i hope you don't mind this menial domestic work?" in all his hazel seriousness he replied, "why would i? it gives me a window into your world." it's been almost seven years since we first met, and he still takes my breath away with how profoundly he loves me. when do i take the time to so casually and intensely whisk away the curtains of our everyday to see him so present in his world, too?

on a post-Easter monday, it's so clear to see the Groom analogy for He lived and died so thoroughly in our world so that we might yet live in His. my breath forces exhale in unspent worship at the magnitude of grace, the curtains rent so that we may Live.

Of soap and sand

it was a stolen moment, a little quiet hiding tucked into the busy of day, those little ones for once just playing together in their room uncaring where we were. we simply lay on covers still unmade from last night and wondered at the simplicity of aloneness, this private cocoon. he grounds me in this nest of arms, and my restless feet statically and rhythmically keep time against his calves. inside the growing one kicks through my belly to his belly, we laughed. he is long and solid like history, and i'm all curves and plump softness (except that tight globe i love so much), and i'm the one leaning on him. i've always been this way. i told him how he makes all of us--three busy boys and even furry loves--feel as if we were the center of his universe. he shrugged; he's always been this way. avery clambers in, finally missing presence, and he reaches over me to grab him up. long brown curls mimic his smile as daddy holds him high and mama snuggles close. shea comes in to tattle, and connor comes in all loud-boy-noise-machine, and the bubble of first-couple is broken just that easily. but like soap, there will always be residue, the tickle of memory from unexpected oasis. so we heave off bed with laughing tickles, our sand in the desert swallowing footprints of the day.

linking with emily and other broken poets along the way

As you are going: Worship

i see songs of worship

in a mother's hands, unconsciously pressed on her purple-stretching skin, a responding call to the fluttering thumps below

in milk that leaks nourishing comfort

in the toddling steps of a wee one, shaky on legs but certain in love's fall-breaking

in the fart-jokes as oldest little one grows--there is a letting go, even this young--and the burst of " i do it" as 3 year old insists on independence

in the quotidian click of wedding bands as she hands him the plates for the table, the eyes catching with an old flicker

in hands that fold laundry and reach under tables during grace

in wearing wife role, which looks a lot like red toenails and the two curved bodies asleep before they intended to

~~~~~~~~~

i sing worship as i tend this home. sometimes i bake the bread, and sometimes i buy it straight on sale. i raise these three boys and grow another, and sometimes it means avery kisses my bottom because that's as high as he can reach, and sometimes it's the constant yelling to QUIET DOWN. i sweep floors and consider decorations, but we have written on our doorposts to Whom we belong and serve. i remember meg's words: just as you are going. one step at a time.


linking with emily and others for her imperfect prose

Lines

the lines on his face tell me a poem,
of the three-before-three trips to emergency:
the gentle dog who bit him
the coffee table collision
the tumbling off railroad tie;
another scar where football scramble
was prayed over, no stitches and healed anyway;
his eyes crinkle like a pleated skirt when he laughs
and i wish i'd carved them all myself.
his dimples drew me in, "hoyuelos" i said on an early date
and i trace them every night in my sleep,
kiss those parenthesis, all mine, gentle scruff scratching me.
those furrowing lines of pressure and worry
no botulism could ever straighten out
and i know he holds us in his thoughts, his
high proud forehead
all the time
and i love him for his lines

************
(241-256 of counting gifts with Ann and others on this journey)

so grateful for the love of my life.
for his patience as daddy and
ability to be jungle gym
b/cs i can't.
for his patience and grace with me
and holding my hand always
for his worry for our needs
and his strength to carry it all
for his searching heart
even when i don't understand
and his laugh that literally keeps me sane sometimes
for his work and ethic to work
even when he doesn't like his job
for his urgency in providing
for providing all these little boys
for the love we make and share
and the oasis in a difficult time we were able to have this weekend,
no getaways, just staying, and being present
and connecting in a way we haven't in a really long time
and always, always, the Grace of the Beloved
in providing me with the helpest of mates,
knowing exactly what i needed and desired.

Oyster

"no white, please. i'm far too pale."

she unwraps cello jackets, revealing gems below: champagne, ivory, two-toned, pink.
i evn find a white one i love in a classic misty move. i rebel even against myself sometimes.
one last glance at the crammed rack, and i see a glimpse of an impossible color peeking out. "oh," i breathe. yes. oyster. this would suit you rather well, i think.

i bought my dress 7 months before he asked.
the answer was always yes.

i never considerd being a january bride--we all probably assumed i'd be a barefoot bohemian, and inside i definitely am.

he says i didn't even kiss him with you may now--lips barely brushed his, he insists. i wish i could smother him in a million kisses and start again tomorrow.
i'm terrified of dancing, but we danced anyway, and these hips have since swayed in endless labor and the rocking of babes to sleep. the dancing of a mother is just the fuller dance of newbride.
tears clouded vision with that first Mr&Mrs; now i wear Mrs unblushingly and well. it suits me, too.

my oyster gown hangs on his side of the closet. it's not even protected. i leave it as it is. that indescribable pearly color whispers to me when i hang up clothes, reminding the housewife of the bride she'll always be.

happy anniversary, beloved.

(this is a day early-we celebrate union tomorrow, but i'll be away from my computer for large parts these next few days, so linking with emily and others for imperfect prose)

Waiting to exhale

head leaning on cool glass pane, window frosting breath-puffs. here, the glass is cool in early morning light, but, too, the A/C's been on all night.
and he, so high and breathless in mountain snow and glory, exhales shivery clouds.

(the photo he took to share with us, gold-capped beauty for waking's taking.)

the coming and going marks us.
we wait for homecoming.
today he will walk on some site, crunching through snow and sales-speak.
today we will probably bake boredom away, perhaps make those traced-hand turkeys, find some way to curb all our tired grappling.
waiting is interim. sometimes interminable.
but hope waits, expectant smiles upon return. the little ones and i wait for him: give and take. it marks us raw, but it is our brand; we are his, and he is ours.

my head pounds. this is the reason i lean on glass. new medicine is still fighting its way through my body, foreign agent, muddling. i'm eager for the promised relief and expectant that new eyes can see rightly with fog lifted high.

i pray for homecoming. a return to the One i love, a turning toward instead of away. i know i've been lifted in prayer by friends. the blessing is a fresh breath, making it easier to breathe my own halting prayers.

and of course, you will notice my new look here. many thanks to my beautiful friend Sonny for transforming this space to match my vision. i think we're still tweaking it, so let me know if there is a problem!!

Carrying

hands effortlessly finding each other in the dark, this is a hallmark of our love. that i can trace words on his stomach only he knows and understands, this is testament to the bands on 3rd fingers. i used to joke that i had so much baggage he'd be a glorified bellboy, and he smiled but didn't laugh at what wasn't a joke. he's carried much, much more these last 5 years. grace in marriage is spellbinding, isn't it? and to parent, to grow as two-as-one into a family of almost 6 when we barely know what we're doing... well, we just grip fingers til white-knuckled those days.

yes, he's carried more.

our home is full of people love and animal love, and we lost some of those poor babies this weekend, lost, too, the first pet i ever got as an adult. there is sadness here and i turn into him at night in our bed, and i cry "i wish it weren't so" tears. that his cheek was wet, too, bespeaks how he knows--how he knows me and my heart and cries for and with me. hands find each other and cradle comfort.

there is a carrying that happens in both birth and letting go. it mirrors bodies intertwined in love and tears wiped away in grief and fingers interlocked in faith. we sleep just so: in love and grief and faith.

Resilient pewter

i read madeleine l'engle's a ring of endless light when i was in middle school. a girl spends a summer swimming with dolphins, and upon her first touch of one, she refers to its skin as "resilient pewter." the phrase has always remained with me, because unlike her uncle (or some such) in the book, i was less keen on the phrase. it was too much an oxymoron, and i, a 13-year old dolphin-expert (ha!), simply didn't agree.

the phrase lingers in my mind, as does its matching title.

he wears a tungsten ring, with pewter's dark hue - none of the dullness and all the ring of light.

the ring is heavy and large. so is his love for this family. he made us into one, accepting all of my baggage and past and insecurities, and he has co-created three, some resemble, one does not except in spirit, and he loves us so full. he leaves us, for work, and the hole is heavy and large.

our love has to be resilient. we weather the mundane, but often peppered with impatience and irritation instead of calm and grace. we resolve long distances, but "i need your help" can sound more selfish than "i love you with all of me, and it rips me wide open when you leave me." the dependency can wear on him even as i'm wearing three boys and wishing the thrill in my heart were louder than the din of all this crazy-love, just the sound of his voice at the end of a tired day.

our love has to be strong but supple. we bend as reeds under the weight of grace, for we've worn out our welcome on resentment and pride and self-sufficiency.

our hands lock, my thin glints shiny-white next to his dark slash, our hard metals melding into one, like flesh, like soul-meeting.

i'm joining, once again, ann's marriage series for the month of june. stop by the rest of the community and say hi!

And yet

sometimes i stare at him as if i don't know him, and the gaze lingers inside. we're just on this side of five years and still young enough to be considered new at all this, and yet we have 3 little boys and life has stretched along with the belly and it seems forever since the sparkle was fresh and the talks lasted a million years into the night.

sometimes i fear he stares at me, unknowing who this softer, rounder, grayer version of me is, this one who has struggled with motherhood and how to be a wife, the balance undoing.

i'm reminded of meg's words, "you'll be making this harder than normal, and marriage even on its best day is still hard," and i think i know what she means.

we never had a married season of just two, of knowing and finding and beginnings. our two started out as three, and we were learning labor techniques and registering for baby goods just months after opening our bridal registry gifts.

and yet.

there is a knowing between him and me. we've known grace, and we've known forgiveness from a God as big as the cosmos, and we've seen love made three times, all look so different and form us so differently and shape how we know each other. there have been adjustments with each babe: seasons of bedsharing turned roomsharing ; the bodysharing that touches me out from little hands and a tiredness that feels eternal; his long hours spent in travel with phone calls that turn into business transactions or temper flaring because i just want him home, with me.

we have an advantage, a would-be-curse turned into blessing. we had to be on the same team, never saw it otherwise. we didn't have the years that allowed us to be intimate, just two, but we had the months to figure out that if we weren't pitching for the same team and shared all the same goal-glories, we'd never make it work. He has been kind enough to show us through many failures and mistakes on our part, that our love for each other can sustain because His love is stamped indelibly in our hearts and to veer away would be to die.


a favorite quote by antione de st.-exupery: life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. our hearts' gaze is fixed upon the Only One who can succeed where we don't. this is the secret to making any marriage last.
please, read over at ann's and her walk with him wednesday series on marriage.

Many waters cannot quench love

we washed each other's feet at our wedding. water pours and love swells, a physical promise to love each other for always.

i remember a shower together, he laughingly insists i hog the hot streams, his hands wrapped in wonder around my already swelling belly. we begin to know the tickling sensation of those things that can wedge our distractions from another, those little flutter kicks that turn into nursing babe and toddling walker and finally brothers three. those little men who need their mama. the big man who needs his wife.
a woman can feel torn from all the needing.

a discussion with college girlfriend about the book A Severe Mercy, and how sacrificial love could be neatly tied into the phrase "a glass of water in the night."

a more recent discussion with a friend who has observed that staying at home with little ones and fighting her own selfish desires often looks like her husband helping her more than she helps him. yet we were created to be helpmeets, and long for that kind of love to come naturally and easily.

i love that my husband fits my soul so well, he knows me inside and out, woos me even as he rough-houses what our love made. i love that our Father saw fit to give us to each other, rib returning to rightful owner. we are imperfect. we journey on in our Story, but one truth to hold us fast: i am my Beloved's and he is Mine.

to join others in celebrating the spiritual practice of holy matrimony with ann @ holy experience, click the button below.

Of soy sauce and serenades

this has been one of those 'off' weeks.
the kind where words are hasty and not always empathetic to the other's feelings. the kind where busy-ness has felt closer than happy-ness. the kind where circles have been made around the other: children tended, dishes washed, work accomplished (or not), and errands here, there, a wall of my-needs-first, careless.
today words were hurled at him; how him? my beloved did not feel be-loved.
so i cooked.more than just prepare the dinner i had planned, i wok-fried that little bit of remembered passion into the neatly chopped vegetables. reheated leftover rice, refusing to give him my emotional dregs, my discards. vowed with the stirfry sauce that he still deserves so much more than i can do, but to daily remember all i love about him when life stills that voice to a quiet whisper.
while he wiped off dirty mouths and i wiped off dirty dishes, i asked him to play "happy music," and with the first notes of a newly favored song of mine, i heard him shouting to me across the room "i love you hunny, as i always have, and will."
you see, he played me my favorite song, one he dislikes--immensely. he played a silly song not normally classified as a love song, and still it quivered each note with patience and forgiveness and friendship.
do i deserve this man? not anymore than i deserve grace. but i love him and am reminded of the Good gifts we're given.