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things that don’t satisfy

I want to write a book. Ever since I was little, I’ve loved reading and writing. My mom’s friend, Jill, used to review my papers and poetry. She’d tell me I had promise, and then critique everything I let her read thoroughly. She told me to keep on writing, that I could go somewhere.

For years now I’ve walked the line of ambition and fear. I eagerly subscribed to Poets and Writers, I submitted an essay to a contest through The Missouri Review, my college major was English Literature. But I also took long breaks from writing (years, here and there.) I wouldn’t attend a writer’s group. I wouldn’t keep writing and submitting if I didn’t get an acceptance and the last one was nearly ten years ago.

This year I stumbled across Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery. I’ve always loved Anne of Green Gables. When I first read the novels, I begged my Mom to tell me that “novel” meant “true story”. She wasn’t completely sure on the point, but thought it meant “fiction”. I refused to look the word up, desperate to keep my heroine really, truly alive. Emily is a more ambitious writer than Anne, and reading it inspired me to write more again. Even if most of it is rejected multiple times, keep writing. Even if I only ever write for myself, keep writing. Keep submitting. Keep trying. Don’t let the restless hours of fear win the battle against creativity and effort.

Today I got an email from a blogger I love asking if I’d submit a trial blog post for them. The sleeplessness of last night stopped mattering – I am halfway to an acceptance letter! My Anne-inspired imagination flew towards the opportunity: I pictured myself writing successful posts regularly for this blogger, becoming a loved contributor. And somehow, the taste of the success became a little empty in my mouth. I held the dream in my hand and realized it wasn’t enough.

Writing will never be enough. Success will never be enough. Being loved by people who will eventually forget me or find another favorite blogger will never be enough. I sat with my head back against the couch, turning over the shining blog post I planned to write, and slowly decided to do my morning devotions first. I moved into the sunlight at the table and flipped open to my soft ribbon bookmark in the gospel of John. Peter’s words from chapter six were underlined, and I read them, trying to find my spot on the page.

“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’”

The words of eternal life aren’t “Please write for us!” or “Your post has been successful!” or even a book deal. The words of eternal life are Jesus’ words. Nothing related to writing is going to give me more than a temporary high and a sense of accomplishment. The Way of Jesus is not filled with senses of accomplishment on our part, but on his. He accomplishes his work in us; and that is what I truly want, that is what will truly satisfy and fill me.

I hope we keep coming back to this, friends. I hope even after this blog post is lost we keep coming back to the eternal life words of Jesus; the ones that won’t get lost, that’ll keep us from getting lost. Let us lean towards the words and the One who will satisfy.

May 16, 2018
initiate

I am an initiate

starting, but not familiar yet.

In the autumn it was “Hello, we haven’t met,”

but they welcomed me in, fellow Mama, camp Mama.

I floundered and wondered at their conversations

and wished I had history to make a translation, but

I am the initiate.

At Christmas it was “White Elephant” and I laughed

happily until my gift was different and

I laughed bitterly and I knew

I was still the initiate.

In May they said Happy Mother’s Day and I asked

What should I pack? What will I want for a summer at camp?

Then we were traveling

and on gravel roads, I slid and slipped

I still felt like an initiate.

The sun was rising somewhere but the fog kissed my fingertips

beauty comes at me in catched breaths and gasps.

Pine trees hold raindrops in sunshine and glisten

when my footsteps echo the birds stop to listen

I recognize home lights of housing like beacons

the air herself bends around me to receive.

Initiate, maybe, but not uninvited.

May 14, 2018
seeing

Yesterday we moved most of our summer things up to camp. The back of the truck was full of boxes, the baby boy full of rice and stew. The higher we climbed up Rampart Range, the higher the anxiety mounted in my own heart. We unpacked, stowing our favorite mugs in the cabinets, tucking away canned tuna and steel cut oats in a cupboard, setting bread and tortillas on top of the fridge.

With each thing I unpacked, the stark reality of our summer at camp took on form. I had known the fridge would be small as but I tucked kefir on the top shelf and then negotiated the almond milk behind it I wondered how I would work with this space. I knew there wasn’t a bookshelf but when I stowed my favorite books behind a charming little end table door, I wondered how I would survive in this literary desert. The windows, larger than I had remembered, were covered in window wells and my heart sank a little more. I had planned for Erik to share our room but when I put him down in the pack’n’play, still unhappy after a bottle of milk, I wondered how much more motherhood I could manage for the day.

I saw the sun shining through a hedge a few days ago. The sidewalk was shadowy and dark but in the gap between the leaves the sun was bright and gold, all the more beautiful for having trickled through the leaves, maybe. And when the sun slips behind the dark-rising mountains in the evening, the colorful rays of evening shine out the more lovely for being ephemeral.

Perhaps that is the way with all beautiful things. I must learn to see them. The moments of glory in parenting will only shine the brighter when I am looking for them, when I have walked through the frustrations. The small closet, the narrow cupboards, the welled windows; these will all become worthwhile when I have looked for the ways that camp life is shot through with light. The same moment the sun sets, the stars begin to appear. When the challenges rise like the dusky mountains in the evening, the soft rays of joy may just become more beautiful.

Look for the light, my friends.

May 11, 2018
the succulent and I // repotted

Last week I repotted my succulents. I bought them from Sprouts nearly two years ago; the dark aloe in copper colored pots played perfectly into my wedding color scheme of rose gold and green. I used them as centerpieces and kept them as living souvenirs of that day. I’m not a green thumb, and I don’t think they’ve thrived under my care, but they’re still alive.

After keeping them alive – somehow – for so long, I decided to stop hoping and start learning. I looked up how to repot them; it seemed like a logical first step since they’ve grown so much. Then I learned how often to water them. Having tabs about succulents open on my web browser is one thing, but it was another completely to walk into the garden section at Walmart and ask for the correct potting soil. It was yet another to grab an old kitchen spoon in lieu of a garden spade, buckle my baby boy in the patio swing, and start scooping a few handfuls of gravel out of the alley behind our house to act as drainage in the bottom of the pot.

They are happily repotted now. I just watered them for the first time (you’re supposed to wait about a week to let them adjust to the new soil.) I’m a little worried that they haven’t loved being transplanted, but hopefully they begin to adjust since they have more room to grow again.

Today we beginning our move up to camp for the summer. We don’t need to bring our entire household since the staff housing there is furnished, but clothing, books, baby toys, cold-weather and rain gear, hiking boots, and anything else we may need up there that we won’t need down here is going in today’s truck load. I’m feeling like my succulents must have, lined up beside the patio waiting to be transferred, at the mercy of gentle fingers and an old kitchen spoon. We’ll be living next to families I already know and love, but I haven’t known them long. I’ve gone to camp before and been in the mountains, but never this camp, never for a summer, never in this role. It seems like a natural role to assume, but a challenging one. It will require adjustment.

Somehow, despite all my nervous anticipation, fear of the unknown, the strangeness of the “camp-wife” role, I’m excited. I flourish in the outdoors, honestly. And I’m beginning to think I’ll adjust well, having more room to grow again.

I used to joke about being a “black thumb” – once a cactus under my care died for lack of water. But there is something about nurturing plants that feels very much like embodied hope. Perhaps even our doomed-to-decay bodies have the essence of life flowing in their very fingertips. Perhaps in a sin-broken world we can still thrive, grow, even nurture.

May 10, 2018
homesick

I used to say of Minnesota that the air was made fresh again in the spring. All the old winter air was gone, I averred. It was all brand new. The soft mists above the melting snow, the clear air in the greening valleys, the air coming through my open window at night; it was all clean, unbreathed yet.

Lanier Ivester said, at a conference last weekend, “I think we are all homesick for a garden.” Ohhhh I think so too. I walk and walk down the streets, past the blooming yards in our neighborhood. The purple lilacs are beginning to flower and I pause by them wherever I find them, just breathing, smelling.

I remember reading The Two Towers and hearing in my mind the deep voice of Treebeard saying “I used to spend a week just breathing.” Yes – I could spend a week just breathing the springtime air.

Tonight was soft and fresh from a scattered rain. The wind was blowing cool off the treetops and I sat outside even in the late afternoon damp chill to enjoy the wet, fresh scents. It was lovely to sit here, in my dry, desert state and remember the freshness of a spring season in my childhood. I think we are all homesick for a garden, a garden in the springtime air.

May 3, 2018
walks that don’t go anywhere

The first year I fell in love with long walks I was only an awkward, sincere teenager. I discovered sometime that summer a large stick I liked to walk with and it was replaced in the fall with a slender stick captured in the Boundary Waters by a friend who sympathized with my wanderings. My sisters teased and called them my “Moses Sticks” but I enjoyed my long rambles too much to mind them.

I grew up from then spending hours walking the gravel roads – roads that could not get me to any destination, but that took me out of myself, gave me the chance to breathe deeply and think quietly and wander widely. Even on a dreary day, I could walk a half mile to The Corner and it would suffice, somehow.

I often thought desperately that I’d love to live in town, so that my rambles could take me somewhere; and I do enjoy being able to walk to favorite destinations, but I was surprised to learn that I missed my solitary rambles through the empty countryside. I walk to destinations less and less lately, opting to wander through the prettiest streets and past the bloomiest yards. I crave the solitude, the emptiness that turned me to entertaining myself with my own thoughts. Those long walks supplied me with time to think and reflect, and create. I miss that most – the creativity that was born of quietness.

I don’t know why it has taken me nearly two years to catch up with my own needs. I am walking more now, trying to make space for reflection and inspiration. Urban life still feels crowded, as if anytime I stretch my arms out I will bump something that is not mine, or be noticed by somebody who does not understand. I must stretch though, must keep my elbow room somehow, must find the space to breathe. So I keep walking.

April 30, 2018
gardening

Grandpa used to keep two giant gardens. The front one was bordered with gladiolus, Grandma’s favorite flower. I remember the five-gallon buckets of bulbs he kept in the basement during the winter. I also remember the crates and boxes of squash, carrots, potatoes and parsnips he sent home with us in the autumn. White parsnips, fried up in a little butter? Not bad, my dad would say. I grew to like them just because of the way Dad talked about them.

My aunt kept one large immaculate garden almost as big as Grandpa’s two put together. I spent some hot summer afternoons moving too slowly down the rows of green beans, wondering when the bottom of my bucket would disappear. Harvesting the sweet peas took longer because we’d all stop to shell a few as we went, snacking on the round tart peas, almost crunchy in their raw ripeness.

My best friend grew a garden too. Her mother was an avid flower gardener, and soon Anni had her own little strip of black wet earth, turned over and brightened with tiny moss roses. She took care of the ferns too – large green fronds nearly as tall as I was that we bruised playing hide-and-seek.

Mom’s gardens were a bit more chaotic. There were raised vegetable beds behind the house that we kids toiled over unwillingly. There were marigolds seeded along the edge of the field that came back and surprised us every year, and an odd row of gladiolus we’d planted from bulbs Grandpa gave us. We always forgot to dig up the bulbs for the winter but somehow they came back. There were a few beds around our large lawn, too, planted with tiger lilies and daylilies, sedums, irises, tulips and daisies and geraniums.

I learned what a garden could look like and somehow worked myself up to believing it would be impossible to start my own. I tend to idealize and romanticize new things, new ideas, until I’m actually afraid to try them. It happened with gardening. I love flowers, I want a garden, but I’m terrified I won’t do it well so I haven’t bothered to do it at all. This spring my mother-in-law brought me a potted arrangement of daffodils and grape hyacinths. They’ve run their course and stopped blooming already, and I finally dug up the bulbs.

This autumn we’ll be moving to a place with a tiny garden bed, and I want to at least try gardening, even if it means starting with five daffodil and six grape hyacinth bulbs. I took my wee boy outside to play while I rubbed the dirt off the bulbs and separated them by variety. The hyacinths were already reproducing, I noticed! Some of the bulbs had little half-bulbs growing off of them.

The bulbs are in paper bags in the pantry now, labeled and waiting patiently to be planted in the pre-winter chill. And me? I’m excited. It felt wonderful to get some dirt on my fingers, let the earth touch me again. There will be flowers growing next spring that I dug up and cared for and planted, and though it’s only a few bulbs from a grocery-store arrangement, I’m still proud.

April 20, 2018
spring

I have always said that fall is my favorite season, until it is spring. Then spring is my favorite. It is still true, and it is spring now. Last year at this time I made it my goal to walk a mile a day until Erik was born. I started walking, sunshine or no. I took laps around the park, crossed the busy street into the quiet neighborhoods, walked along the golf course and the bike trails. Spring was popping up everywhere, and it is again.

There are hyacinths growing, and tulips and daffodils and grape hyacinths. I see the spiky shoots that will be irises this summer, and the waxy lilac leaves unfolding slowly. Creeping ground covers are subtly regaining color from their tough roots to their tender fingertips. Trees are slowly, slowly greening and blooming. This city is its most vibrant self during the spring, I think.

I put Erik on my back and we set out. I take mental pictures over and over – that sweet cottage with the cherry tree, a glimpse of sky through that the willow branches. Erik pushes against my back and turns his bald head to watch the passing cars, neighborhood dogs, anyone on a bicycle.

In Minnesota, spring began as soon as the air was above freezing temperatures. Puddles grew, roofs dripped through the gutters, snow glistened, mists formed. The air itself seemed new and fresh; indescribably so. There is no damp, new smell of changing season in Colorado. We are “high desert” after all. But there is a fresh scent still – a whiff of pine carried down the mountain, the dry-green smell of yuccas washed over the sun-baked rocks. Yes, there is still a hint of spring in the air, even as on the ground.

Spring has a power like no other season to get me outside in Colorado. I like to wander, to discover. I hunt beauty and bloom, keeping photographs as my bounty. We come home with roses in our cheeks, and set out again tomorrow.

April 16, 2018
when life builds you

You know the days when your baby takes long, peaceful naps and the sun is shining on the patio? You know the days when everybody’s happy when Dad gets home and there are kisses and giggles; dinner time is a cozy, cheerful affair? You know when you look at those smiling green baby eyes and put down the distractions and go for a walk together, cooing and bababa-ing back and forth at each other the whole while? Those are the days you build your life.

Proverbs 9:1-2, “Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.” I didn’t really pay much attention to these two verses until a year or so ago, when I read the end of the chapter in the context of the beginning. Verses 13, 16-17 say “The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.” She calls out “‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!’ and to him who lacks sense she says, ‘Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.’”

You know the days where your babe seems to wake up just half-an-hour too soon every time you lay him down? The days when you have a crick in your neck which causes a headache which, you ruefully reflect, will probably mean terrible sleep? You know the days when the terrible sleep means you’re still groggy when the boy wakes and wants a bottle, so you might as well just stay awake? You know the days when the man you love comes home and you just want to snap that you never get to punch out and go home from your job? Those are still the days you build your life.

It’s obvious in Proverbs 9: Wisdom works. She builds the life she wants, the good life. You can’t exclude the bad days from this pretty pattern you want to create. The days when you’ve planned and organized and somehow your life still seems in control of you? The days when you sit down dazed on the edge of the bed and wonder if you managed anything, at all, besides the (too-late) timing of your son’s (slightly healthy-ish…) meals? Those are the days you want a do-over. And those are the days you still need to build – if nothing else, build your responses to the way those hours shove you around.

You can’t – ok, let’s stop masking this in second person.

I can’t create a grace-filled life if I’m not going to have that grace on the hard days.

I can’t lead a loving life if I toss love to the wind when it’s not easy.

I can’t have a heart that serves if I’m not going to serve when I’m tired.

Let me tell you, this kind of life – this kind life – takes a lot of courage. But even more it takes persistence. I need courage and mercy and gentleness this morning? Yeah, well I’m going to need them all again this afternoon, this evening. Again, tomorrow morning. It seems it’s always time to choose. Everything is only ever built brick by brick.

April 11, 2018
let the earth touch you

It sounds stupid in my head to want to take a barefoot walk in the middle of a city neighborhood, but I do. My best friend and I used to do it together when I’d visit her in the city. Even now sometimes I can’t resist. I went out barefoot just a few weeks ago. I didn’t go much further than just around the block, but it still felt grounding somehow.

The weekend after that walk I visited friends in northern California. We took a hike through a grove of giant redwood trees. The trail was flooded in places. We sidestepped over half-cracked branches to cross wide puddles, and leapt carefully from one muddy bank to another when the water filled the entire trail. I had forgotten how irritating and exhilarating it is to get your socks wet through your shoes and slide precariously on the slick earth.

The next day we visited Ridgewood Ranch, wandering in and out among the fenced and wooded pastures, following first the redwoods and then the creek. We stumbled upon a beautiful pasture pocked with cow patties, hoof-prints that had collected water, and an old zipline. In the spirit of adventure, we all took a turn on the zipline – racing down the hill and dragging our feet on the tussocked ground to slow ourselves before coming to the end of the cable.

My jeans were so dirty I had to turn them inside out to pack them in my suitcase that night. But I was glad, even then. It was satisfying to get so dirty for once. I often did as a kid, even as a teen. Lately I’ve been adapting to sanitary, suburban life, I suppose. Why is it so important to just be outside, in the woods, getting dirty? There is something so natural and free about not minding if your socks are a little wet, your jeans a little muddy. It is important to let the earth touch you, now and then. To remember where you live, how you live.

It’s all making me more glad that we’ll be moving up to summer camp next month. I look forward to getting a little dirty, washing a little extra laundry, and getting a bit closer to the earth. Here’s to the the pebbles that get into our sandals, the puddles that soak through the mesh of our shoes, the wind that whips your hair across your eyes, into your laughing mouth. Here’s to being people familiar with the ground we walk on.

April 7, 2018
example

Morning nap – first nap of the day. Sit you down and read I tell myself. I leave the breakfast dishes, the scattered letter blocks with baby teeth marks, and I begin my mid-morning with scripture. It’s a slow-forming habit. To ignore the sunshine, the messy floors, the urge to spend quiet hours indulging in youtube – it’s not easy. The rewards come slowly, but they come. So I sit with my Bible again.

I don’t like to have a daily time with God unless I have a plan of some kind. Lately, as I attempt to parent well, I have chosen Proverbs as my starting point. I’m reading through the gospels as well, but I start each study time by reading through the chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the day of the month.

It is four months in; I love the repetition. Again and again I hear the same warnings against adultery, the same urging to seek wisdom, the same need for a fear of the Lord. And again and again Proverbs says “listen, my son”. Each time I’ve read it I’ve thought, What have my parents taught me that I need to remember and listen to right now? Today, God changed what I heard. What do I want Erik to learn from me, and remember?

That was not a comfortable question.

I want Erik to learn love. I want him to know the “breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” so that he can love others with that same abundance. So then, that is how I need to live. I am pondering now how I can better love others. I want to be somebody who cares, who remembers somebody’s name, who hears their struggle without condemnation.

My mama was a great one for loving people. She’d invite anyone over for holidays if they didn’t have a place to gather. She’d talk to a stranger in the grocery store or a wrong number on the phone for an hour, just because she cared enough to feel their hurts. I want that heritage to run strongly in Erik, so it will need to run strongly in me. I have heard it said that a mother’s biggest contribution to the world may be those she raises. If that is true, then the only way I can truly magnify that contribution is to lead Erik by my own example.

So, here is to living the large love my mother taught me. Listen well, baby boy.

April 4, 2018

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