He found us true love

by Alanna

Almost one and a half years ago, I got married to this incredible man. Time flies fast and now we have a baby girl. She is incredible and occasionally difficult. I guess beautiful things never come easy. Marriage, it's a gift. Baby, a gift too. Sometimes I just look at them when he holds her, and marvel at these miracles. Me so undeserving, God so good to give me this family.

 

We drove past the usual billboard for the strip club on our way home. They seem to abound in our neighborhood. And it discourages me, all this sin and lust and cheap imitations for love. But I realized something deep down this time, and I laughed in sheer joy. We've found true love. Not something fake, but something solid as a rock. Love not of this world, but love sacrificial and patient and kind. True love stops the car for me to vomit on the road, doesn't berate me that I couldn't wait til we got home. True love makes me eggs and cheese almost every day for weeks, while I recover from birthing his child. True love does the dishes and cooks steaks when I'm weak in bed. True love waits in the hospital with me for hours, cradling baby girl in his arms, changing her poop when it comes. True love calls me beautiful when my hair hasn't been washed in 10 days, and I'm stained with baby spit-up. I look in the mirror and laugh. Beautiful? True love makes me so. True love perseveres, when I turn over in bed and refuse to communicate. True love forgives me, makes me laugh when I cry, doesn't give up on me through grumpy days and nights. True love provides for me, drives me to the grocery store and appointments, plays guitar to calm down my screaming baby when she won't nurse. Through sin and tears and the ugliness of my heart, he loves me still. And He loves me still. Tonight I'm so thankful. Families come with the hard but they come with beautiful. And it wasn't me that found true love. God, giver of grace and good things, found it for us.

       

babies of mine

By Mary

"From your head down to your toes, you're not much goodness knows, but you're so precious to me, sweet as can be, baby of mine." 

I sing snippets of these lyrics to the little ones in my house, sometimes as I marvel at their preciousness while my heart proclaims their perfection and sometimes in more of an effort to remind myself that no matter who's doing the screaming this time or why, they are just as precious. And really, they are sweet. I mean, don't ask me why I had to have a conversation with my almost 3 year old about licking people (maybe she hangs out with the dog too much?) And don't ask me why my little guy decides he can't be happy about anything after his afternoon nap unless someone will take him for a walk first. I'll never know.

I do know I want to be a visionary mommy, with eyes that see beyond temper tantrums and inconsolable baby moments and messy rooms and sleepless nights. I don't want to view my role as simply a management position, keeping everyone and everything organized and functioning. I try to remind myself to look for the heart of the matter, the heart of my child, and to not see a difficult moment as just something to get through but also something to use. And I hold my baby a few extra moments at night before I lay him in his bed and find rest in mine again, savor his head against my shoulder, my cheek against his hair.

I pray for them...that they would be excellent in what is good, innocent of evil. I pray Gianna won't outgrow her confidence, her loving and helpful spirit. I want her always to be able to accept that she's something special in the same easy, assured way, without vanity.

In the first weeks after my son was born, I'd hold his sweet tiny little self and just pray for that innocence in his darling little face, those trusting blue eyes. I don't know if it's just because I'm personally (obviously) less familiar with being a man in the world today than with the struggles women face, but there just seems to be so much out there ready to attack and hinder my little boy from being a real, strong, gentle man.

But while I can waste the days away worrying, it all comes back to the same thing: these precious-as-can-be babies of mine aren't mine. And there's two ways for my to view that. They are not mine to manage and train into something for my ease or enjoyment or quality of life. And they're not mine to save.

When I think of babies, it's easy for me to almost put them in the same category as puppies-lots of work but so cute and sweet and making life even more enjoyable. And I really find it so necessary to remind myself that this is how God brings each person into the world. His unique creation for His unique purposes. It awes me and humbles me. God doesn't just create grown people and place them around the world at the right moment for a specific task. Even His own Son came as a newborn. May I never be shortsighted and see the now as all there is--or the now as insignificant. And may I never take up the pattern of fear and worry by assuming the role of God. I hope rather to humbly seek Him on their behalf as their mommy...and let Him use me as He wills.

relearning

by Alanna

I started writing a nice blog sometime early last week I think. It was about lingering, and the way that baby girl makes me slow down and just be. Open my eyes and breathe in the world, thank God for it and every precious moment I have with her. I never got to finish or post that blog, but it was just as well.

Last Saturday we took our first trip out of the house since her birth, and that night I came down with a high fever. I've spent the last 5 days in bed, with no energy to read or check e-mail. The exception was the trip we made to the emergency wing of Lutheran hospital, where I was hooked up to IVs for an hour and gave away lots of blood to the doctors so they could check all kinds of things. (And no- there's hardly anything wrong with me. And yes- I do feel that hospitals and doctors alike tend to overreact to a fever). Baby girl slept peacefully in her dad's arms for hours. I got sent home with antibiotics. My husband made me a little schedule of the 5 things I need to do every 2-6 hours, depending. Between taking pills and doing hot and cold compresses, I try to sleep and nurse the baby and even occasionally eat food myself.

I've been grumpy a lot. I cried a few times, got impatient with the baby, impatient with my husband, impatient with myself, impatient with God for not healing me faster. Just when I was starting to feel recovered from giving birth, I felt like I was back to square one. Stuck in my dark bedroom, helpless and weak. Winter arrived while I've been in bed. All my high talk of gratitude and gifts and lingering was just talk. Too easy because life was beautiful and the sun was shining. Nursing wasn't too hard, I hadn't been really sick in years. But accept infections and weakness as a gift? I refused it.  Refused to accept pain and chills as from Him. And when your fist is closed tight, no good thing can be placed in it.

I got a card from my dear friend here (glittersmallworld.blogspot.com), with these convicting words "so thankful we are seeing his gifts so clearly." Oh but my heart is ugly these days, and my eyes all tight shut like the curtains in my dark room. Then a few hours later, a phone call. Someone who just had spinal cord surgery, telling me how thankful she was for time spent in a neck brace in bed, unable to do anything. Because she listened to the Bible on her ipod, and God taught her and blessed her so much. And me? Crying over a simple infection. Using pain as an excuse for all kinds of unlove toward my family. 

So by God's grace I turned over my tight fist and opened my palm and breathed thank You God for this. Thank You Jesus for this infection. For being bound to my bed for days. For my husband's patience with me. For my baby girl's smiles. For being gifted with a family at all. For my eyes that still open and my hands that still turn and my lungs that still breathe air. Why do I wake in the morning and take all this for granted? My dear friend told me that if we prayed more often for daily bread, we would be more thankful and see more answers to prayers.  I don't want to lose sight of this- 'small' gifts that aren't small at all. I feel that all my words and ramblings always come back to this. I am so very unworthy. My Father is astoundingly good.    

by Alanna

I woke up sad today. Tried to explain to my husband that expression- waking up on the wrong side of the bed. But it doesn't really make sense because if there's no good reason to be sad, then why am I?

I sat down this afternoon to make a calendar page for November, looking through photos from South Africa. They rose up in me like a flood- nostalgia, love, sorrow, memories, aching. What hit me hardest was the fear. I remember today, not just in my mind but at the core of my heart, what it feels like to be a mom present with your child. Joy like I'd never known before, laughter and love so beautiful it made me cry just to look at him sometimes. Love too big for my little heart to hold, and it burst open and flooded and I remember the joy and the pain. I remember love at first sight, wonder and awe at knowing this little person had been entrusted to you. I remember feeling unworthy, incapable, weak, but oh so thankful for such a gift.  This heart of mine remembers not just the good but the hard, the surrender and the separation and the mornings I woke up with tears still flowing.

So what do I fear? Maybe it's that things will be different. Will mother love come at first sight again? Will I be blessed twice with that much joy? With love that overflows? Do miracles happen twice over? Maybe I'm afraid that things will be the same, and maybe I don't have the courage to love that much again. To open my hands wide means receiving not just the gift of love and joy, but also the possibility of deep pain. I think motherhood must be the hardest and most beautiful risk we ever take. I want to love baby girl this way, full and empty. Surrendered and yet holding fiercely to joy and hope. I want to love with all of me, but tonight I'm just so small and afraid. Thanking my God that His love is courageous and knows no bounds. Might He bless me at the birth of baby girl with just an ounce of His courage.

Wait for the Lord,

be strong and let your heart take courage;

wait for the Lord! 

  

these dying trees

by Alanna

Since 2009, I've missed three autumns in this country. Two I spent in South Africa, and the last in Honduras. There wasn't much of a season change there- not these brilliant colors and falling leaves. In Honduras the daylight hours don't even shift much. Only lots of rain for a time and then not much at all. Things died in both Johannesburg and Catacamas, but they weren't trees and grass. Hard things I had to lay down. Love, desires, attachments, heartache.

Here in our house, things are changing like the seasons. Our marriage duo we are losing in a way, as we welcome new little life any day now. She will make us forever three. Something will be lost and something so beautiful gained. The trees in our front yard are the only red ones in the whole neighborhood. The rest are still green with a few yellow. But ours are brilliant. First yellow, then red, and today a burnt orange. Leaves litter our yard but the view out our window is still full of color.

A dear friend said it in prayer meeting, that the trees make dying look glorious.

I read a blog passed along, about how motherhood is dying to yourself. My friend on the phone reminds me that marriage is too.We get so caught up in what we want, what we need, our own petty desires. Autumn reminds me that life is about dying. It is not easy, and sometimes I'm so reluctant to lay things down. But it is glorious. Not just the beauty of resurrection, not just the flowers of spring, not just the answers I wanted. This dying to yourself is in itself, in a way, glorious. We follow in the footsteps of our Savior, and we are crucified so that He might live in us. We bury our hopes and dreams and sometimes our whole heart at the feet of our King, thankful that He is not just mighty but good. He makes dying worth it. 

Southern Living

By Mary

After what seems like the longest summer ever (partially, perhaps, because fall is so slow in coming this far down south, and bares little relation to my favorite kind of Colorado fall), we're finally, officially"settled". I unpacked the very last box of knickknacks while my parents visited just over a week ago, and even organized my closet a few days back. Now if the true definition of being moved in is having all your pictures on the wall, it's probably going to still be a while. But meantime we're slowly learning the ropes around here and finding our favorite places to frequent, beginning to get used to this southern living thing.

Of course life doesn't ever really go according to plan so our most frequented spot of all is in Savannah, Georgia, a little over an hour away. My hubby started having back pain just before we moved in and it got progressively worse to the point where he was walking with a cane and then really unable to walk or move at all and using a wheelchair for doctor appointments. Long story short, we're now driving an hour three times weekly and paying out of pocket to see a chiropractor to see if we can avoid back surgery. Praise God he's really doing so much better and I'm hopeful it continues. Every time I see him holding Dominick up and getting him to laugh or taking a minute to chase Gianna around the house or when he gets into the driver's side of the car, I realize how many of God's daily gifts I constantly take for granted.

This has been a hard move in so many ways and even now that its all calming down and everyone is adjusting pretty well and this beautiful house we've been blessed with is feeling like home, some days I feel so depressed. Mostly, I'm just lonely. Sometimes I'd just love someone else to talk with me, face to face, other than my almost three year old (though she does have a great vocabulary and imagination)

But I'm trying to stop...just stop wishing for what I don't have and make the most of what I do and realize how rich I am despite what I may think I lack or what I pray to be different.

I look at the other houses being built around us in our neighborhood. The process for some seems so long, while others spring up seemingly overnight and others come to some sort of standstill while they wait on something, something I can't see and can only guess at. And it reminds me that there are times and seasons for everything. God is at work, with the master plan He alone knows to make everything beautiful in it's own time. What I have is enough--and it's not finished. He's molding, building, shaping, inside my heart and the lives around me. And slowly I learn, over and over again, to enjoy Him and what He gives. Day by day.

lest I forget

by Alanna

In my house I recently discovered a small zip lock bag full of sticky notes. They are from my days as a single woman, when I owned my own car and drove people around in it often. They are God-given gifts, written down and captured. Given thanks for then, and now again years later as I look and remember. Estes Park with a small date in the corner. Indoor plumbing. Sindi. An ever-redeeming Savior. Martin and his family.

I also found pictures and stories and notes. Those eight precious ones I loved in Haiti 6 years ago, the "Lions" and their hand prints in red paint, scribbled pictures from my little one, a small heart necklace from a girl named Danya I met in Juarez 9 years ago, a circle necklace from that heart-broken and precious boy from South Africa. I found stories I had written my first year in college, about battles I tried to fight with God and the doubts I had. Losing Berlancia, crying tears over the head of D'jemy as he vomited all over me, uncertainty over the future of my youngest sister. I remember feeling lost, and always questioning in these situations. Was God trustworthy? Could I leave this in His hands? My sister, my future, this child so close to death, another one taken to heaven, those children I loved far across the ocean, my son. I read these stories and I remembered, and it took my breath away.

He has always been trustworthy.    

All my stories didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. Heartache was real and hard. Not all separations ended in reunions. Not all losses were turned to gain. But redemption happened. So many fatherless children are orphans no more. My youngest sister lives with us still. Some things I thought I had lost were things I wasn't mean to have, and my story is more beautiful now because of losing them. Some things I lost were like seeds that had to die to bear fruit. So I proclaim without a doubt in my mind that

He has always known best.   

I don't want to forget. This small box of memories, I don't want to lose it. God has given me countless gifts, redeemed countless broken situations that I had given up for lost. He has done more than I ever imagined back then, in all those nights when I cried out to Him. I wondered at times if He was listening. I am sure now that He always was. His ways are not ours, but oh they are beautiful and good and He is wise and strong and loving.

I, I sit in silence here

I'm filled with wonder once again

I'm overwhelmed by Your beautiful love

Now I, I'm falling to my knees, so grateful for the grace You give

The love I need I've found in you

Lest I forget

All of Your goodness

The blood You have shed

The cross I now remember

Lest I forget