Jetta

                                   

I don't remember when the prayers began but once they did, they never ceased. Neither did the questions. 

Mommy, when? 

Have you talked to Daddy any more? 

Do you think it will be before my next birthday? 

How much is a fence? I can save up and pay for it. 

How much are shots? You can take it out of my money. 

For years this child has begged for a dog, this child who relates as well to furry friends as she does to human ones. 

My husband thought it would be a phase. But she is nearly 11 and this phase has been going strong for a good 6 years. One of her favorite pastimes is thinking of names for animals she doesn't even have. 

I told her time and again why pets are a huge responsibility, how they are messy and expensive and rude, leaving their fur and slobber all over the place, chewing up shoes and furniture and then having the nerve to jump up in your lap and lick your face. 

I might as well have been speaking into the wind. 

My husband and I knew we had already lost the battle. It was simply a question of when we would wave the white flag of surrender. In my heart I felt we were getting close.

The day before Thanksgiving we made our annual trek to the flea market. You know that's a post in and of itself. We always see puppies at the flea market. And bunnies. And chickens. And pork rinds. 

But we happened upon a table with three sweet pups and the nicest owners. Their mama dog had an emergency C-section to deliver these bundles. A feeling came over me almost immediately. This is the one. I took their card and told them I'd call.

Four days after holding this furry bundle at the flea market, Blondie held her very own puppy in the van as we drove home. 

We stopped at the store while I ran in for special food and puppy pads and a leash. A leash. What in the world are we doing? I thought. An animal that poops and pees and barks is going to live in my house. In. My. House.

I realize that a dog is a normal, everyday thing that lots of people {who are not us} have and it's no big deal. 

But Jetta is a big deal to us and to me.

It's a crazy miracle, how overnight I have gone from someone who held animals at arms length to someone who loves this furry, four-legged thing that slides all over our hard-wood floors in the cutest way and looks up at me with those black marble eyes and head tilted just so. 

She has wriggled her way into hearts that already felt full and made room for more love. 

The Man and I, we find ourselves giggling and sighing. Over a dog. She has made our already complete family somehow feel even more complete, a four-legged gift I didn't even know we needed. 

As for Blondie, well, she finally got an answer to those persistent prayers of hers. A Thanksgiving gift, an early Christmas present, and a best friend, all rolled into one precious package.

Linked up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky for Tuesdays Unwrapped: Winter 2011 Edition. 

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{For inquiring minds, Jetta is a Miniature Schnauzer, 6 weeks old. Her name means "black gem."}

Real Gratitude

It feels strange and good to write here again after an unexpected "blog-attical." The truth is, I was weary in both body and soul. I had things to say and share but no "oomph" to get to the keyboard and scrawl something out. And that's been just fine. After all, I wrote for 31 days straight last month and that left me a wee bit drained.

Like everyone else, I'm thinking about gratitude during this week devoted to the celebration of thankfulness. And as a mom who longs to be somewhat intentional about the virtues of the upcoming holidays, I fight the urge to force gratitude into the hearts of my children and then wrongly assume that something genuinely noble will work its way back out.  

Between preschool and church, my three-year-old has made three thankfulness wreaths in the last three weeks. My older kids gave presentations to their classes last Tuesday about things they're thankful for. 

My 8-year-old's list went something like this:

1. a house  
2. CC {our homeschool group}  
3. PS3  
4. iPod Touch  
5. a bed   
6. football  
7. Mommy & Daddy  
8. a TV  
9. God  
10. Church 
{Numbers 9 and 10 came at my urging to write something even remotely virtuous}. 
11. friends  
12. clothes  
13. a toilet  
14. a body  
15. Harry Potter

I'll be honest, I feel like a failure as a mother when I see PS3's, iPods, TV, and football making the cut before God and church.

At ages 3, 8, and 10 I'd prefer them to appreciate Jesus over electronics. My husband says they're simply more honest than we are. He's right.  

My kids aren't alone. A friend of mine has been sending me regular updates of her boys' thankfulness tree additions. They're hilarious. Their Sharpie-scrawled paper leaves said things like: My DSi, my xbox, my brother being quiet, and not having to do school. 

We are soooo spiritual, she joked. The boys were well into the thanks-giving before Jesus even made the list. 

We can laugh about the tree, but it represents a common lament among mothers. Our kids don't appreciate the things they should and they worship the things they shouldn't. We want them not to complain about their dinner when kids in their own community are starving. We want them not to want more and more when they already have so much. 

Misplaced affections are the human condition. Discontent is our default.  

My own sense of real gratitude, budding though it is, has been slow coming. As in just the last couple of years. 

Noticing the small gifts, celebrating the everyday, knowing that in Christ I already have all things--I was a grown-up for years before good and true things began to matter in any sort of meaningful way. I'm three decades older than my 8-year-old yet I expect him to be further along the path of true thanksgiving than his mother is. 

Daily, I fight for gratitude. And some days I surrender to the trivialities of this world before the day even begins.

As Ann Voskamp says in her book about gratitude, The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling...We can only experience one emotion at a time. And we get to choose... 

Choosing thankfulness takes practice. And practice takes time. And time is something my kids haven't had much of yet. And really, they are thankful. I simply judge the objects of their gratitude and in doing so, I heap condemnation on their young hearts and nurture guilt in my own.  

My primary prayer this year has been this: 

God, make the Gospel real to me. Make it work its way down deep so that all of life looks different. May it change the way I live. May it change the way I love. May it change the way I forgive. May it change the affections of my heart. May it change the way I give thanks. May it change the way I sacrifice. May it orient my gaze, moment by moment, to the cross. May gratefulness for Christ and His finished work matter over everything else. 

Deep gratitude for the beauty and power of the Gospel always gives way to grace. And grace gives me compassionate eyes to look at a young boy's thankfulness list peppered with electronics...and smile at a child's honesty.

It's a start. For him and for me.  

I hope and pray that one day gratitude for things that matter will fill their hearts and change their perspective.

But until then I'll let time and the Spirit do their work. And I'll nod earnestly and pretend that the Cars 2 video game is indeed something to be thankful for. 

Basic Needs

A new week begins whether we're ready or not.

Today was one of those mornings when I surveyed the disarray, examined the undone, inventoried the chaos and wanted to give up before I even began. 

I walked up the driveway after an early-morning run and noticed all the trash in my yard. Trash. In my yard.

Popsicle wrappers, plastic cups, and unidentifiable plastic shards.

I complain. My husband reassures me and says our home and yard simply look "lived in." I told him that it looks looted.

It's days like today that I have to put on blinders and focus on the most rudimentary of needs. I want to finish an array of tasks that will pretty things up or restore some semblance of order.

But what do I really need to do, God? That's the question I prayed in the shower.

As I considered our basic needs, I was struck by the spiritual corallary to the physical must-haves. I wonder if God planned it that way.

So what do we need?

We need food. 

...Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. {Deuteronomy 8:3}

We need covering.

I delight greatly in the LORD; 
   my soul rejoices in my God. 
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation 
   and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, 
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, 
   and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. {Isaiah 61:10}

We need rest. 

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength... {Isaiah 30:15}

When we're feeling frantic, overwhelmed, and less-than, it may be because we're hungry, exposed, or tired in the physical sense. But it may go deeper than that. 

Perhaps we need to feast on truth, to open the Word and taste renewal.  

Maybe we need to recognize that His righteousness {and not our own} covers us. Nothing we do on any given day {or fail to do} can clothe us with anything else.

And might our search for true rest be found as we trust in Him and not in our own efforts to subdue the disorder that surrounds us?

The yard trash is still there, dinner needs fixing and the laundry continues to mock me from the corner, but deep within I'm learning what matters and what doesn't. 

It's ironic that sometimes I simply have to get back to the basics in order to realize that I actually have everything I need.

God in a Waiting Room

I spent yesterday in a waiting room. 

My 3-month-old niece underwent open-heart surgery and I drove up for the day to wait alongside her parents. 

It's hard to explain the emotion that hangs heavy throughout the rooms and hallways of a children's hospital. It is a place of hope and heartache, twin, invisible threads inextricably woven together into one cord. 

I found myself fighting back the tears at inopportune moments and not tearing up at all when it seemed like I should have been. 

Crisis is unpredictable like that. 

I've seen mothers stand strong and stoic as their child's life hung in the balance. And I've seen these same mothers weep over that which is less consequential on an everyday Monday. 

In one sense, I think that is God's grace. The tears have to escape eventually. But sometimes they come later, taking a back seat to the strength that enables endurance for the here and now.

Our tiny, private waiting room, crammed with four loving grandparents, two unbelievably calm parents, and one protective big sister / auntie {that's me}, was abuzz with laughter and chatter as the hours ticked by yesterday. 

Grace infused us all with the oddest sort of normalcy during those waiting hours. 

Yet I found myself crying as I waited for the microwave to heat up my cold coffee and overheard a mother and father, hands held tight, praying fervently about tumors. I entered an elevator, heart nearly split in two, as my brother told of a doctor he'd seen crying and my mother spoke of a woman weeping in the arms of a nurse. 

In those moments, I felt God's presence in a palpably real way, so close I felt I could touch Him.

If God is anywhere, He is surely in that place, close to the broken-hearted and near to the crushed in spirit.

As I left the hospital and began my bleary-eyed trip back home, gratitude overwhelmed me. 

Gratitude for those who spend so many years in school and residency in order that they may one day heal baby hearts and comfort the grown-up ones too. 

Gratitude that we live in a place and time where this sort of live-giving surgery and care is possible. 

Gratitude for my younger brother and his precious wife and their sweet Naomi who will now live and grow and teach the rest of us what living is all about. 

Naomi was born with that special 47th chromosome. We know it as Down Syndrome. 

A friend of my father's sent him an e-mail yesterday, a friend who happens to have an 8-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome. His message simply read, This child did not come into the world to learn. She came into the world to teach. 

She is and she will. 

In the meantime we wait and offer thanks to the God who knit her together and who holds all things together. 

The God who reveals His handiwork through the loveliest almond eyes and perfect smile of a tiny baby. 

The God who shows His skill through the precise and guided hands of trained surgeons. 

The God who comforts us with His unmistakable presence in hospital waiting rooms.

He is good. 

{Day 31} Why Real?

For 31 days I've spilled words onto a screen and hoped for the best. It's been a terrifying and wonderful experience. And now I'm exhausted and still a bit terrified because for better or for worse, what's written is now written. 

It's out there for the world to see. {Small world though mine is.}

Writing real is risky. There's no two ways about it. So many of my life's story-lines--whether it's motherhood, marriage, or the many vignettes in the middle--tell of a girl who's gotten it wrong as much, well...probably more than, she's gotten it right. Why would anyone in her right mind blow the whistle on herself for 31 days straight? 

Because she's tasted the sweetness of grace and once you've tasted grace, you want to share it with the world. 

Living a right and perfect story is no longer my goal. It's not about being impressive or lovely or strong. It's about taking a hard look at the life I actually have, accepting it in all of its loveliness and brokenness, and offering it up to the One who makes it all lovely.

I long to live real, free, and redeemed. 

Someone lived a perfect life 2,000 years ago and He did so because I can't. And you can't. That man 2,000 years ago changes everything for me today. And tomorrow. And all of the rest of my days. 

Because of Jesus, there is amazing grace, unconditional love, boundless freedom and unspeakable hope on the days when I get it right and on the days when I don't. 

He is the real truth and He's come to set us free.

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Thank you, dear ones, for joining me for these 31 Days of Real. Thank you for your comments, e-mails, and messages. Thank you for your kindred encouragement. Really, you have no idea what a beautiful and emotional experience it's been to write from the heart for 31 days. I keep crying over this last post because it feels like the end and also the beginning...of what yet I'm not quite sure. 

Thank you, dear husband, for encouraging me to do this and for picking up some slack when I had to get another post ready. Thank you for reading every single post on marriage and giving your blessing to publish them. Thank you for telling me to write from my heart and not with an audience in mind. That was the best advice of all. 

If you haven't read all or any of the posts, here they are, all 31 of them. And I'll keep the 31 Days button up in the right sidebar so that you find the posts easily in the future if you care to. 

Keep it real. 

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"Best of 31 Days Link Party" at Imparting Grace

Many bloggers {over 700!} have also written for 31 days. My friend, Richella, is hosting a "Best of 31 Days Link Party" today for any "31-dayers" who would like to link up their favorite post. I'm joining in and if you're a fellow "31-dayer," I hope you'll link up as well!

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31 Days of Real

{Day 1}: A Real Invitation

{Day 2} Real Motherhood: The Overthinking Mama

{Day 3} Real Motherhood: Gently Led

{Day 4} Real Motherhood: It's the Small Stuff

{Day 5} Real Motherhood: Notice the Becoming

{Day 6} Real Motherhood: Teach Them What You Know

{Day 7} Real Motherhood: Feast on Today

{Day 8} A Song for Really Living

{Day 9} Real Change: Just Pick One Thing

{Day 10} Real Writing

{Day 11} Mom-Jeans and Miniskirts: What's a Real Mom to Wear?

{Day 12} Keep It Real. Wear It Well. 

{Day 13} Real Meals Part I: The Contemplative Cook

{Day 14} Real Meals Part II: For Real Meals

{Day 15} My Real House

{Day 16} Real Rest: An Invitation

{Day 17} Real Rest: A Reason

{Day 18} Real Rest: A Practice

{Day 19} Real Home: Living Large in a Small Space

{Day 20} Real Home: Double-Duty

{Day 21} Real Home: You Won't Remember, I Promise

{Day 22} A Real "Disorder" {sort of}: Reading Guilt

{Day 23} And on the 23rd day, she rested. Really.

{Day 24} Real Marriage Part 1: Am I Really Doing This?

{Day 25} Real Marriage Part 2: When You're Struggling

{Day 26} Real Marriage Part 3: On Little Things

{Day 27} Real Marriage Part 4: The Myth of Quality Time

{Day 28} Real Marriage Part 5: Laugh It Up

{Day 29} Real Marriage Part 6: Get Back to Dreaming

{Day 30} Real Marriage Part 7: Choose Life, Even When It's Falling Apart

{Day 31} Why Real? 

{Day 30} Real Marriage Part 7: Choose Life, Even When It's Falling Apart

When difficult days come, there are often no easy answers or quick solutions. It's natural to want to delay real living until things are looking up. I mean, really, how does one go on living and find any joy in the midst of such difficulty? 

As we've gone through trials in our marriage, I haven't been all Pollyanna about things. Really, there has been a good deal of mopeyness. 

But life moves on with or without my permission. 

In the midst of disappointing days, I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not let the days pass me by. I took my kids to our regular places. I smiled and made small talk with friends. I spent time with family. I laughed. I watched movies and read. I took pictures. I dressed up occasionally. I ate Ben and Jerry's. 

And it hasn't been just a solitary thing. Forging a new "us" hasn't happened in isolation. Over the hardest days and months, we still talked. We went places together. We joked. We ate dinner. We read excerpts of books out loud. We looked at the stars.

And we did these things smack in the middle of a life unraveled. 

I've savored the little things in a big way. Only Grace can give you the oomph to do that. 

I'm not naturally a joy-chooser but I am naturally a life-liver. 

In the better moments of my most discouraging days, I knew that healing would be slow. Things don't come undone all at once and they don't stitch themselves back together overnight either, not when you've been married for any length of time. 

If I waited for complete resolution before I gave myself permission to live full, a lot of life would pass me by in the process.  

One chapter of Grace for the Good Girl, "safe, even when it hurts," is a place I have returned to several times. These words infused my soul with much comfort and clarity:

When things break, something happens inside us. The routine is interrupted by the urgent, and the broken thing becomes top priority. Shake it. Tap it. Turn it upside down. Find the glue. Replace the batteries. Pull out the needles and thread. Return it to the store. Throw it away.

It isn't natural to just let the broken thing be broken. 

It's not, is it? But that's what I've had to do. Accepting the broken thing gives way to freedom. In my case it hasn't been a happy, smiley sort of freedom. It's been more of a necessary resignation. 

I simply dropped the heavy load I'd been carrying. 

This heavy load was our swept-up brokenness. I'd surveyed the shards of our broken life, a brokenness we'd both contributed to, swept up the jagged pieces, tossed them in bag, and carted them around. It was heavy and taxing and depressing because no matter what I did or where I went, the bag of brokenness was with me. 

It was and still is a bit of a process but somewhere along the way, I dropped the bag at the feet of Jesus and told Him that He alone could fix us. I told Him I'd surrender to the process, however long it would take. 

I "let the broken thing be broken" and determined to make the most of my days in the process. Because really, we all have broken parts our lives. To refuse to accept them is to refuse to be human.  

In the same chapter, Emily Freeman goes on to say this about healing:

Healing is messy and fluid and often unpredictable. I can't manufacture my own healing. It usually takes longer than I think, runs deeper than I wished, and involves more areas of my life than I ever imagined.

This has been so very true in my life. You can sit around and wait for healing to hurry up already so that you can be happy and savor life again. Or you can choose to see everyday beauty, embrace everyday gifts, and love in everyday ways today, no matter how tangled up life feels or how long the process may take to untangle it.

It will not be easy. There will be days when you pick the heavy bag of broken pieces back up and try to haul it around again. 

Keep letting it go. 

Keep choosing to live full in the midst of the broken.

Grace and Hope will equip you. And Joy will find you. 

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It's been 30 days. Tomorrow will be my last post in this 31 day series and I can't believe it. Many bloggers {over 700!} have also written for 31 days. My friend, Richella, is hosting a "Best of 31 Days Linky Party" tomorrow for any "31-dayers" who would like to link up their favorite post. I'm joining in, though I have no clue which post I'll choose to link. If you're a fellow 31-dayer, I hope you'll link up as well!

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{Click on the button for the list of all the days 

and topics thus far.}