Category Archives: choosing joy

(Jesus in my Eyeballs) or Be Thou My Vision

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Irish_tattoo_269 Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art
Thou my best thought by day and by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

Lately, the Hymn “Be Thou My Vision” has been an essential part of my morning prayers. Specifically the Ginny Owens version, her voice is haunting and slows the busy rhythm of my frantic morning thoughts.

This song has always been more than just tradition to me, because with it I ask God into my extremely human senses. I invite him into my eyeballs and eardrums, the very lenses with which I process life. Continue reading →

Overcome (to the point of the Happy, Ugly Cry)

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Sunday morning I woke up in an awful state.  My chest was tight with anxiety, my mind swimming with unanswered questions.  I could hardly think beyond our budget and calendar.

The weight of it threatened to crush our prospects of having a peaceful or enjoyable Sunday.

Thankfully, God led Kel and I to pray about it all, which isn’t always our usual.  Sometimes I rant and rave with worry until I get put in time out.  And through this, God worked a small miracle and redeemed our Sunday.

We made it to church with only one song left in the worship set, and it was then that these lyrics hit my ears.

775882_28643193 There’s nothing worth more, that will ever come close
nothing can compare, You’re our living hope
Your Presence Lord

I’ve tasted and seen, of the sweetest of Loves
Where my heart becomes free, and my shame is undone
In Your Presence Lord

Holy Spirit You are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your Glory God is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your Presence Lord

Holy Spirit, Jesus Culture, check it out here and then go to iTunes and download it.

Somehow these words hit me with such strength that teared up and grabbed my notebook, sat down and scribbled away.

When I stood back up, I had a new prayer on my lips, so much bigger and better than just: “God make sense of our budget” or “God give us direction for the future.”  I’ll still be saying those prayers, but I’ll be praying this one louder:

I want to be overcome this week, seriously and totally overcome by God’s gifts and fingerprints on my life.  I want to be moved to tears, I want to ugly cry my mascara off for the joy of what I’ve been given. Continue reading →

Still here and here, still.

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Us. Loveseat.

Good morning from my office, the one next to our dining room table which is covered in laundry and uneaten pancakes, still a bit sticky from last night’s mac n cheese for dinner.
Cuz we’re fancy when Kel’s out of town. We sent him on sabbatical by the way, shipped him to a cabin in the woods to talk walks and read books and pray.  I think it’s my season to take special care of him, because marriage has seasons like that, doesn’t it?

So I’ve been solo parenting these past few days, but I refuse to whine about it because I know too many single moms that do it solo every.day.  They’re some of my most super-est heroes. (I’m looking at you Jenae, you stalker)  

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A few hours before Kel left I posted a chalkboard list, asking for ideas to pass the timewhile Kel is away.  I was going to sew the kids a puppet theater, and take them to the library, we were going to make the 45 min trek to the Children’s Museum.

I had big plans to cram the hours full so they’d fly right by.

But we didn’t do most of that list, we played and baked and read a lot but we only left the house together once.  There just wasn’t anyplace we needed to go, we found great contentment in the sweet right here.

Pitawich!We dug into all those new Christmas toys.  We giggled a lot as Noelle invented a new lunch called the pita-wich, a sandwich, IN A PITA!  We think it’s funny but odds are you  had to be here.

I wiped their noses a lot.

We ate mostly clementines and leftovers.

I annoyed Caedmon by sneaking up on him and clipping clothespins on his shirt.

I became a novice railroad engineer by building tracks on the train table.

photo copy 4 We watched Cars 2, a lot and I let them Vroom cars on my head and legs.

My dear friend Jessica came over to help me a bit and I opened up my heart to her.

I spent a lot of time sitting still, snuggling my children more than I have in months.

I doled out hundreds of kisses on their faces and necks, irritating amounts of kisses.

I’m a goer, a doer, a producer, but these past few days I realized that how much I’ve shortchanged my motherhood.

photo copy 3 When they fell asleep I cleaned up the most pressing messes and then headed to bed to read and write and be still some more.

Because we needed this cozy, simple stillness. I needed to remember who I am and see these two beauties for who they are, which is exactly who they were created to be.

Sometimes I see the mothering as the distraction, the roadblock standing between me and what I need to be doing.

photo copy 2 I know that sometimes it will still feel like that.  Things aren’t perfect around here, I’m not living in an permanent state of mom-gasm like some women SEEM to be.  I freak out, I lose it, I need a break from the noise and crazy on a bi-hourly basis.

But this morning as I sip my luke warm coffee I’m simply thankful for the sweet, still right here.

I’m also thankful that Kel gets home in about 5 hours… not that I’m counting.

What’s grounding you these days?  How have you spent the first week of the New Year?

When God sends you a plunger

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Broken, every piece, sob…

Mornings with preschoolers always feel like they’re teetering on the brink of chaos and some mornings they fall right into insanity. Today was one of THOSE mornings, fraught with chaos.

It started out fairly normally, warming sippy cups of milk and turning on PBS for the kids while I found my bearings, made my coffee.

Then, while I was in the other room trying to finagle a last minute Christmas gift for Noelle my son pulled all of my parent’s heirloom stone bakeware onto his feet.

The result was a shattered mess of lovely pottery and several cut and bleeding toes.

I was a weepy, awful mess over the whole thing, because I cherished those pieces of cookware and I cherish my sons baby toes.

I couldn’t help but grieve those shattered pieces of stoneware that I’d lovingly gathered from my parent’s house after my Mom’s funeral.  Why couldn’t it have been something cheap, something from Kohls or even a wedding shower gift.

Out of everything in the cookware cabinet, why did he have to break those?

Why couldn’t he have been content with the safe, plastic mixing bowls I’d set out for him to play with instead of going back in for “a different ones!” Continue reading →

The Thanksgiving that almost wasn’t (or the one where I get smacked with truth, and it hurts)

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Noelle kept trying to stick bendy straws in my cranberry candle centerpieces like they were a cocktail.  This has nothing to do with this post, it’s just funny.

This year we hosted Thanksgiving at our place.  It was the four of us, our friends the O’Neals and a little girl form the Youth Shelter that spent the day with us.

Kel has long harbored dreams of frying a turkey, I have long stood in the way of these dreams. I’m not a fan of deep frying, period, in fact I’ve never deep fried anything in my life.

If you gave me a fry daddy, I would probably give it away, mama don’t fry that.

Yet, after several reassurances that the oil would touch only the skin and the meat would be tender, not soggy, I agreed to the deep fried bird.  Yet, it still bothers me, all that oil!

At 10:30 Thanksgiving morning Kel began to rig up the turkey fryer, only to realize that were short on peanut oil.  So off to WalMart he went to procure a few more gallons of oil, gag.

Around 11:30 Kel came in to tell me that the oil was not heating up and if something didn’t change, we may not have turkey this year, we may have to figure out another feature protein.

AH NO! I’d been planning this day for weeks, we had company on our way, I took a big sip of my bloody mary and said something like: “No we’re having Turkey, you get out there and figure it out.”

Kel, Jason and the kids gathered around the Turkey Fryer.. like it’s a campfire or something. Yes it made me nervous having them around hot oil…

Not very cute of me but it was Thanksgiving!  There needed to be Turkey! Continue reading →

Tears, Tantrums and Hope on the Horizon

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 If I’m honest I’ve yelled at God a lot this week, those have been my main prayers.  As soon as my heart unleashes all it’s frustration upon the God that created it, guilt and shame ensues.

I know that it’s okay to yell at God, but I’m a 30 year old mother not the headstrong idealistic college chick I was ten years ago.  The spiritually mature don’t have weeks where they sulk and yell at their Father God, do they?

I guess this one does at least.

This week I’ve been angry, I’ve been a six year old girl on the inside, looking God straight in the eye and yelling: “This is not FAIR!”

Not fair God to endure the loss of my father, my mother’s sickness and suicide, two years of hard grief only to emerge and to the wounding of our hearts over the ministry we’ve spent four years pouring into.

Not fair God.  This is an uneven distribution of pain.

Deep inside I fear that you will always keep us struggling to teach me a lesson that my thick and stubborn heart hasn’t mastered just yet.  Perhaps I don’t rely on you enough to come out of the painful times?

But, is pain the only way to learn true reliance?

God, can’t we have an easy season, a break from bearing a heavy burden?

At least twenty lovely people have told me that they’ll pray for us this week, and I responded with the expected “thank you.”  But I confess that inside I thought: “It won’t make any difference but sure, knock yourself out.”

Yesterday I emerged feeling brave again, strong again, less cynical and more optimistic.  We have weathered worse storms than this, this season of painful persecution.  And hey, maybe it means that we’re doing it right?

I know that we’re approaching a turning point of some sort.  I know that an extra measure of deep breathe bravery will be required, I feel like we’re approaching a cliff, that we’ll need to take a leap of faith soon.

At Saturday’s sun rose I awoke feeling more like the “me God created me to be.” I shook off the labels and painful words that I’d let stick to me over the past few months.

And as I write these words “Be Thou my Vision” starts trickling sweetly through my ear buds.  My Father’s hymn, my favorite hymn, God I love hymns.  They wash over me like gentle, lapping waves and remind me of what is and what isn’t.  Who I am and who I am not.

Be Thou My Vision Oh Lord of my heart
May my eyeballs see you when they look at the world

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Somewhere inside I believe my Dad manipulated the Pandora system to send me this song in this moment.

Dear God, can I still be your child, stand up from my tantrum and take your hand once again as you lead me where you know we need to go?

If you find yourself doing some wondering and yelling this week, I get it sweet friend.  What have you learned in your seasons of painful wondering or tantrumy “not fair?”   

I’m with you, I love you.

31 Letters to my Mother {Day 11} Cupped hands, held high

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 Dear Mom,

Guess what? These letters are not just bringing healing to our hearts, but they’re inspiring people to reconcile with each other here on earth. While they have the blessing of breath and life to share.

I’m broken hearted that our real life, skin to skin time has passed. I will never claim that this road of losing and remembering you is an easy journey.  It has undone and remade me Mom.

Yet, I keep imagining myself with cupped hands, held high, begging God to redeem my story.  A posture of “here, take it, make it beautiful in a way that only you can.”

Do you remember the story in John 9 about the man born blind?  I have no idea how heaven works, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.  Heck maybe you’ve done drinks with THE man born blind.

My mind is imprinted with the verse: “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” John 9:3

I love that Jesus side steps the stupid trap of the question and gives something far more lovely.

We question “why” all the time, both on purpose and by nature. The why of pain is a road that cannot be navigated and to be honest I rarely mess with it anymore.

I have no idea how to sort out what God sends for his glory and what is an inevitable result of living in a broken world.

This world, that operates outside of original intent.

I don’t think God sent your depression, or that his finger was on your death.

Yet I am glad you’re free of pain, whole and reunited with Our Father, and Dad too. I’m glad for the redemption of your story, my story, our family, this life.  Piece by piece, day by day, bit by bit.  

That the works of God might be displayed in him

Redemption, hope, healing, reconciliation, I see those works happening and they certainly fall under the heading of works of God.

For without him, those words are not, cannot come to fruition.

I love you, I miss you,

LeaRae

Letters to my Mother {Day 10} Hope Collides

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 Dear Mom,

Tonight my spirit feels lighter, after Kel left to go back to work the kids and I sat on our huge new bed and worked the Melissa and Doug puzzles you got us.

The cool fall air drifted in through the window and for a moment all was just… perfect.

In that breath I caught a glimpse of something, something that looked an awful lot like hope.  Something drifted through our window, beautiful and translucent, that reminded what me hope feels like.

Not what it looks like, because I think I get the physical steps down pat, but the feeling of hope has been sorely lacking, elusive.  Yet tonight my soul felt marshmallow light, feather free and I felt as though hope collided with us right there on the bed among the peg puzzle pieces.

It took me back to summer evenings when I was a child, laying with the windows open because we didn’t have air conditioning.  I remember even then marveling through the screen at the way the lawn smelled after Dad mowed it.  Or the way the neighborhood sounded as the houses settled in for sleep.

You know what feeling I’m talking about?  When all just feels, right and you soul takes off.  The hope and future that God promises us suddenly feels around the corner rather than 7,462 miles away.

I know this feeling eluded you on earth but I bet you take baths in glorious hope nowadays, wholeness becomes you.

Yet for me, earthbound and striving, the hope on my tongue melted sweetly.  It was more delicious than the peanut butter cupcake I ate after the kids dozed off… or at least equally as delicious.

As I cling to hope and learn to pray I realize that as I hold hope in my folded hands, it melts and becomes the glue that holds me together.  Hope and prayer fill in the cracks and make me stronger.

I don’t feel like I’m bragging, because this is what we all want for our children isn’t it?  Eyes to behold the wonder created just for them, revelatory moments where they realize that the simple is the profound and eternal.

So I think that this, truly makes you smile.

I love you, I miss you,

LeaRae

Letters to my Mom {Day 9} Humble Pie

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 Dear Mom,

Writing to you like this is really starting to mess with me, you’re on my mind all the time.  It’s like grief bootcamp, I know that the pain will lead to greater strength and freedom, but my heart is always on the watch for you, drawing parallels, replaying forgotten memories.

Today I found a new level of grace for you, and my soul uttered deep apologies, guttural, uncomfortable, awful and healing.

I lost my marbles this morning over, of all things, a travel mug.  Apparently coffee is intrinsically tied to my sanity.

My spirit was weary and I snapped.  I grabbed Noelle’s arm too hard when she peed in her car seat, I screamed and kicked the fridge, and then I crumpled on the floor.  A soggy mess of tears and apologies.

Kel saw my desperation and offered grace instead of judgement. He took the kids to run a few errands while I stayed at home seeking peace and sanity.

I remember moments when you lost it in the throes of intense mothering.  I held so many of these against you, used them to remind you that you were a failure in my eyes.  Now I blew it, we both blew it, I’m so sorry Mom.

I sobbed in our bed to Kel about how the kids would grow up hating me.  He reassured me that they’d love me always, then lifted each child into bed with me so that I could weep into their necks.  I sobbed rivers of apologies and a thousand “I love yous” into those baby soft faces.

You made mistakes as a mother and so do I.  Who am I to say where the line is between normal and excessive when it comes to motherhood meltdowns?

Did you cross it?  Did I?  Does it matter?

Would I be baking this humble pie and offering up all these apologies to you right now if you were still alive?

Would the fire of the early motherhood years have refined me and shown me how to offer grace if you were still on the other end of all those emails?

I hope so, I like to believe that with time the trials and triumphs of motherhood would have connected us.

And they do, and they are,

I love you, I miss you,

LeaRae

31 Letters to My Mother {Day 3} Genetic Panty Problems

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photo by f i R a s’ on Flikr

Dear Mom,

I spent about an hour on the phone yesterday with Aunt Betsy, it’s always so nice to be able to catch up with her.

I told her about a hilarious story from last week, which involved me sending Noelle to school without panties on.  And of course she was wearing a skirt which only compounded the problem.

I had spent a few hours sewing her a new, tiered skirt in black and yellow prints. I was so excited to try it on her, it fit and looked adorable!  I raided her closet and found the perfect black top to complete the ensemble.  As I was getting her dressed I made a mental note to slip some panties on under the skirt.

The morning got away from me and as I ran outside, I staged a few pictures of her in the outfit so I could show off my first garment.

When Kel got to school he sent me frantic texts, Noelle has no underwear on!  

Luckily we were had a backup pair and the day continued on normally, with some laughter and a few moments where I shook my head and mumbled something about my priorities being backward.

Panties are more important than presentation, especially at preschool.

As I chatted with Aunt Betsy she filled me in on a similar situation with you and me.

Apparently when we were going to Baldwin Street CRC I marched up to the front of the sanctuary for children’s church.  Upon reaching the front I promptly lifted my dress to show the congregation my business.  You’d forgotten my panties too.

You must have been mortified.  How much time had to pass before you could laugh about it?

Aunt Betsy and I made a joke about how forgetting panties must be a genetic thing with us.

Then she was able to recall a time when Grandma Mac and some of her sisters had to turn around after walking to school in the snow because one of the girls had forgotten underwear.

So it must run on the Elenbaas side.

Perhaps we need a sign by our front door, where we keep our car keys:

STOP!  Is everyone wearing underwear?

Or: Keep Penny Parts Private!  Wear Underwear! 

Oh mom, this parenting this is a crazy dance and anyone who judges it without experience should be smacked upside the head.

I wish you were around to laugh and cry with me about forgotten panties, lost sleep and late night marriage fights.

Miss & Love you

LeaRae