Skip to main content

Thoughts

June 30

Day before the miracle son becomes 15 - how did it go by so quickly - why does my heart try to keep him so much younger?



Reading Ann (http://www.aholyexperience.com/one-thousand-gifts-book/) is good medicine. Just read the "toast" chapter and remembered our own toast moment just 48 hours ago, and I let anger win, but it never really does, because we all lose when I choose anger. It only births pain.




But I don't want pain. I want joy. And so I must beg God to see His face in the moment, to help me choose the thanks to redeem the ugly, to count this hard space as a grace gift too. But of course, that means I will have to accept another opportunity to choose joy. I will have to practice, and practice is what makes perfect, but it isn't always lovely. I will have to work to get it right.






And at the same time, I am wrestling to see my new image in The Man's eyes. Who am I when "lover" is no longer my main role? What will happen when my body is no longer the primary motivator for his thoughtfulness? Who are we now? Can we fall back on friendship? Have I been a good friend? Can I be a better one? Friends share interests, time, and secrets. They talk and plan and laugh. Can I put aside "lover" and take up "laugher"? Can I be content to just be joy in his life? Isn't that enough?









Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Grace ... Not This Time?

I have thought to write this over the years, but I have always chickened out. Today I will say it. I read a repeat of a heartbreaking headline yesterday: "Baby Suffocates in Hot Car." I can never read the articles; they are too awful. And I always feel horribly sick to my stomach. And I can't read them because after the article usually come the comments. The comments where perfect strangers to the people involved berate them publicly for being the worst of parents, neglectful monsters, and worthy of death or worse. I assume because you are all my friends that you have never (nor would) post any such thing in such an instance, but be honest, have you ever thought those things?! I'm here to tell you (and risk losing friends in the process) that if you've ever thought (or said) those things, you need to say them to me. No, I've never lost a child to suffocation in a hot car, but... I could have.  I could be the one being called those terrible names. When ou...

This Season, this Manna, this Father

The first day of summer - the first full day of a week without my six oldest. The seasons are changing... I want this to be a time of relaxation and reset and rebirth, but something in me fears it won't happen - that it isn't possible; that they will come home and it will all be still as it was. As I look at what life would be without the six in it, I know I love them; I know I want them back; but... I don't want back the life we have had lately, fraught with tension, cross looks, hormone release, and lots of tears. I miss them. But perhaps I miss them because I miss the opportunities to do more, love more, engage more. Opportunities I didn't take often enough. That I missed. I miss the six because I have missed the opportunities. And then, I read two witnesses on the bread in the wilderness and I am convicted. Manna - no one, the wise fathers nor the up-and-coming children, knew what it was. But they ate it. They trusted God, and ate it. And ...

A Time to Plant

  It's time to cut down a tree - or two -  both literally and figuratively, it would seem. We finally escaped our too-spendy rental in the new state so far from the old stomping grounds. And after much dragging around of the realtor, found a spot to call our own and plant the brood and all our accoutrements. There is land here - enough for chickens and gardens and even for all the vehicles that accompany our menagerie - but it is virtually bare land. There are only half a dozen trees on the whole property. With the exception of one overshadowed apple tree, all the trees are a variety of willow, more leggy than sturdy. There is one just outside the bedroom window. I want it to be wide and spreading, solid and reliable. But it is not. It seems that it is dead. Yes, there are leaves and shrubbery, but the lady at the nursery down the lane - the Jolly Lane - informs that the leggy growths and barren trunks are indicative of trees that have ceased to be healthy - whose hearts ...