Courage Letters

This is a piece I typed up to share with my church’s moms’ gathering that met at my home yesterday. It started out as a response to a post my friend, Miranda, put on Facebook. She was asking if any mothers ever felt like they flourished during the child-raising years. My answer grew as time went on. Here is the basic text from what I said during that gathering.

For Miranda:

I’m not sure you’re gonna like my answer…but after 18 years and four children here’s what I think I’ve seen. Growth is a long, slow process. I have seen renovation happen in my home, reconstruction and planting in my yard and around my house. There is always this “disruption” phase that happens in the beginning. Everything is broken down, bared, messy, even sometimes toxic (like finding mold or lead or leaks or asbestos, or needing to dig away to the foundation). The flourishing we so desire to feel doesn’t always produce evidence at every phase. And just like in the beginning phases of a big project it can look like DEstruction at first glance. But the breaking down, the disruption, the moving aside of the old for change is most definitely the beginning of something Very Good. If you feel overwhelmed at saying, “No” to a tiny rebellious human for the thousandth time or cleaning up the floor for the millionth time…it’s because what you’re seeing is just the beginning phases of a Thing of Beauty for your child and for you. The planting season in the farming world looks pretty bleak. Nothing is green yet. Winter is still in the air. It’s brown everywhere. Your children are still young and just storing away all the information and habits you are planting in them. What’s being grown in you and what you are growing is still very small. Jesus’ parable of soils lies in my mind’s eye and I see him talking to crowds of farmers probably. But we forget that in his 5 minute dissertation he’s covering months and months of waiting. Harvest is far away from planting. If there is one solitary thing about growth/flourishing to embrace in these early days where things look bleak, it’s TIME. God is not slow as some count slowness….but patient. His patience is slowly, slowly, like leaven in dough, growing and filling the corners of your heart and the spaces of your children’s lives. The fruit of it takes many years to see. 

But how to survive til the end? Well, like the Raffi song, “…inch by inch, row by row.” Daily saying, “No” with love. Daily dusting off hands, daily cleaning up floors, daily teaching smiles and hugs. The planting season is wearying and long. Let’s call it what it is. Can mothers flourish while doing these tiny things that walk us step by step to harvest? In my experience, no, not like you’re thinking of flourishing, not like you WILL flourish in the end. Just like planting season is its own thing, a lean, winter season, with only a dream of fruitful harvest, these early years are lean and full of humbling tasks. But they can still be done before the face of Jesus. We can feel him beside us as we plant. In every inch of floor you wipe up after mealtime and every diaper you change there is Love, there is a Planting, and there will absolutely be fruit from that. And let us also remember that Jesus is instantly near to those deeds…the fragrance of those offerings are sweet, so sweet to him. Washing the disciples’ feet as our example can give us mothers a sense of kinship with Jesus. How we wash feet as mothers!! 

One more word on suffering. If it feels like you’re not so much gliding along planting seeds with Jesus, but rather drowning in mess and grief and loneliness, there is another grace for you. Crying out to the Lord in the midst of this creates something precious…I found that crying out and crying out and crying out IN ITSELF gave me a new strength. I found out I was good at calling on Him! Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things which you do not know!” That is the most incredible reward for someone in the depths of despair who cries out to God. Women in the Bible who called out to God had the reward of being ANSWERED. God showed them great and unsearchable things. They came away changed…..many of them giving God a new name after they encountered him. Hagar in the wilderness, in despair called out. God answered and told her great and unsearchable things. He gave her a future and a vision and a promise. And she named him, The God Who Sees. And if you can find it within yourself to cry out to God like Hagar, to lift up your voice, you will find that he hears. Hannah, who was barren for years, humiliated by lack of offspring…she cried aloud to God and when he heard her and answered and gave her a baby, she named him Samuel, “God has answered.” Then there are the stories of Ruth and Naomi, who cried bitterly to God, and he gave them Boaz, who fathered Obed, the forerunner of King David; of the mother of Samson, to whom the angel of the Lord appeared three times to make sure she understood she was no longer barren…the small whispered prayers, the bitter longings expressed, the weary-hearted mothers tired of the foot-washing, the big and the little, small and great calls of women go before the throne of God…He hears and he answers. And we flourish therein. This scripture may be oft-poorly-quoted to suffering people, but it is true….that…our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!],

So motherhood is Suffering. Suffering is holy, if we cry out to God, if we nurture a sense of calling out.  And holiness is flourishing. And in the end, we do see perfection and paradise!

It’s worthy of remembering that yesterday we talked about the beautiful picture that labor and birth give to us, where “we break the veil between life and death,” as I think Emily commented. Reminds me of the veil that was torn as Jesus breathed his last and gave up his body for us on the cross. I wrote about birth in a post here a while back, remembering my last baby being born. I swiftly approached the moment of crowning, and all my body and mind told me to run from the pain. Some part of me knew there was only one way through, and it was through a veil or a curtain. That curtain was pain and death. I put my head down and said to myself, “Alrighty, I’ll just die, then.” And I pushed out my fourth child into life in that moment. I love the picture this gives us of the rest of the life of mothers, where we put our heads down into the veil between death and life, we momentarily give ourselves over to death (the diapers, the laundry, the dishes, the cleaning, the wiping, the discipline, the tears) and we cry out to God (remembering that he hears us BECAUSE the rejection of our cry that we deserve He poured out on His son, who, when he cried out on the cross, there was no answer! Chilling, but life-giving!), he answers us, and we find ourselves on the other side, ready to Harvest, looking around at Bounty, at Paradise, at Fruit, at Shalom, at life!

I saw so many beautiful things today in church. I saw a girl crying, but also laughing, her back bent as the priest laid his hand on her. “I love her so much!” I heard Jesus say.

I saw the blood of Christ in a glass vessel, cupped by the hands of my friend, who brought it and laid it in the hands of another priest. Then later, her voice, her words (her craft), welcoming those who might want to join her in her quiet, imaginative work, to talk to her after the service. Did I want to do the announcement for her? She asked, nervous. No, I wanted to hear her speak. I longed to hear her speak.

I saw my golden-haired friend watching me sing. She hugged me unexpectedly, mid-song, and holiness spread above us like steam rising from a good loaf of bread, broken open.

I saw a woman’s face, behind the microphone, looking upward as she sang, looking at Jesus, singing to him, smiling at him.

I saw knees bent in awe, I saw hands forming the cross over breasts in wonder at the hope of resurrection.

I saw grief and beauty wrapped tightly together in a weeping face. How does the body and blood of Jesus do this to us each week?

I saw my husband sitting with his friend, knees turned toward each other. Loving him.

I saw babies running, babbling, tripping, crying, slapping toys. Holy sounds, part of a symphony of fragile, exquisite humanity twisting its way to the throne. Not far to go, for the Throne is among us.

I saw lips moving, voices joining like thunder, “Thine is the kingdom, forever and ever…” with thousands and thousands of others who have gathered in these wooden seats before us, lifting hands and voices for generations, all looking at Jesus. Forever and ever.

These sights and sounds, they knit me back together after the week of worry unbinds me. I feel my senses weaving back together. Sight has feeling. Color has scent. Longing has touch.

“Now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us…”

Now, send us out. We are whole again.

How does anyone ever leave a home? It means so much. At least as much as the petal once it falls fragrantly from the rose to settle in the grass (It was meant to be there.) and it is at least as fragile.

I looked at the home in the photo. “Managed by Blue Summit Realty” it said. The watermark was splashed across the photograph so that no one could assume they could own it. I did, though. I had owned it. And I had birthed my baby son in that same big white bathtub the sign was crowning in the photograph. I owned it, I built it, I labored in it, I gave it life, I sorrowed, I bled, I laughed in the home. It had been mine. But how fragile! How much meaning was wrapped up in the timbers and frames and plywood and drywall. How little I knew. How much could timber and drywall mean? As much as the petal, touching the grass, finding it new, finding it home, losing itself a little, folding, laying its color aside, becoming smaller, shrinking, and finally dying. As much and as little. How we live and die in our fragile little homes, wherever we fall into them! They mean as much as the grass under our feet. As it touches us, we are changed. We cannot move from our homes, not really. There is no moving. There is only losing bits of ourselves as we go, losing the color, the feel, the sound, the memory of ourselves as we fade into the grass.

”Carpe Brewski.” I could still read the words carven onto the top of the steel bottle opener, still visible in the picture under the bold possessive watermark, still screwed into the side of the countertop. We sprung for that on a whim on our way out of the hardware store. We’ll enjoy seeing friends use that over the years, we chuckled, imagining a kitchen filled with the friends we would make and keep in the house. We would look at each other, husband and me, eyes meeting over a crowd of friends in that bright kitchen, surrounded by our work—paint we painted, wood we sanded, walls we cleaned and primed, decor we fought over and selected, compromising again and again for the sake of Home. I don’t know why they left it there, it made a good joke, I guess. A selling point, maybe. That hurt to think of. It felt like an offense. Like someone looking at my body, seeing my scar, my blemish, my moles, and saying, “We’ll leave it. It will make a good selling point.” Homes don’t want selling. They want loving. Like bodies, they don’t want to be marketed. They want to be seen and loved. I loved the home, I thought…I thought I even knew it then. But I didn’t. And I didn’t know I didn’t know. The excitement of the “big move” and the “big price tag” were luring me to think that they could replace what I was losing…and I did not know I was losing myself. I did not realize it was Me that was for sale. Too much of me had soaked into that house for it not to matter. The babies, oh, the babies! The little pudgy steps all over the floors. The burping into the carpet, the endless wiping of the floor, loving, loving the floor. All my love went into the floor. The aching arms cleaning, polishing the glass doors, the endless polishing of the glass. All my love went into the glass. The touching up of the paint from little fingernails, little heads bumped, little feet kicked, oh, the endless touching up of paint. All my love, all of it… went into touching, touching the paint. The walls and the floors received the tiny feet, and received my cleansing efforts, shone, smiled, and kept us all warm. Carpets kept our feet dry, the cupboards held our dishes and towels, guarding them quietly until we reached for them, almost breathing to us, “I have held them ready for you all these days”.

No part of that home was untouched by me. I left myself all over it. My children, their bodies, my arms, so strong now for the cleaning; my tears, shed mostly at night, missing other parts of me I did not know yet, and sometimes my husband who was gone so often. I left little ideas, plans, hopes, and heartbreaks in every room. Some half-borne, some miscarried. Barely grieved. And the house received them all.

I must look around this home, now, and see what I have eyes for, since I am older and wiser. Do I see how this house has held me? Can I see the grass into which I have fallen, how it is my home? Although the wind may blow me away at any time, notice how I have fallen just so, right here, into this particular place. Look into the kitchen, on my right. There is a herringbone-tiled wall, white and dependable, reaching up towards two little floating shelves, strongly supported by a carpenter’s brackets wisely hidden in a stud. My fingers formed little squares of drywall to hide the slits, pushing mud through every little crack around it, slowly, slowly disappearing each piece of evidence. Sand and scrape, sand and scrape, sand and scrape. All my love has gone into the walls. Beautiful wood shelf, strong, strong bracket, wise carpenter, faithful hands, all existing just to float over the white glossy tiles, supporting many, many plates for serving tasty food to many, many mouths; happy, friendly mouths. All my love.

No part of this home is untouched by me. The herringbone tile will tell you so. The green wall under the wooden bar in my kitchen will tell you so. It meets the white quartz slab of countertop humbly, at the same level, welcoming children and friends to sit, faces on palms, watching me wash all the white dishes in the deep, square-bottomed sink. Thump, thump, go the sock feet against the green wall. I have touched up and touched up and touched up that paint. There is sock feet and paint and love all mixed up on that wall. And I see it and it fills my eyes whenever I look just over to my right. And it sits right below the dependable white herringbone wall over which the shelves float. All my love.

The birds are talking outside my window. I have come to know them all. They live here, and were here before I was, before I and husband and children came to this musty brick home and scraped the green carpet off the porch. They watched us come and go, bringing dirt from here to take it there, making new things and removing old. We feed them often, and they thank us with their morning songs and their evening songs. Our pilleated woodpecker fancies himself a menace and attacks his reflection dutifully in our van mirrors. We know he was there when the mirrors are all askew the next morning. Faithful woodpecker! Faithful home.

The fig tree before me hovers away from the pair of blue armchairs towards the bright window. It leans eagerly into the sunshine, leaving half itself facing the room, apologetic to be leaving the beauty of my living room. Beautiful, it is. There is a blue-chipped buffet that tucks up underneath the half-wall before the stairs in this split-level living room. The half-wall, now stripped of its bangle of glossy blue spindles which welcomed us back into the 1970’s, floats at the top of the stairs, reaching its arm out towards the living room. Behind it is the hallway…grey walls softly edging grey walls like a geometrical love letter of angles and corners, trimmed with fresh white paint and a glass pendant light dangling like an earring over the graceful angles and edges. Its downward light meets the upward light of a chunky brown 1970’s attic-found lamp, topped with a new linen shade. Books welcome your curiosity in snug corners, tucked into baskets, square and round, and lined up like scholars atop the blue buffet. Plants, oh sing the plants! Plants drift over the room, green and glistening, soft and foamy, curling, promising, pleading, bristling, defying, and seeking and reflecting the light from every corner. One here, drifting down a stack of Jane Austen books, one there on the floor, standing resolute and ancient, with prehistoric spikes stuck like sliced watermelon rinds curling towards the ceiling. Plants actually grow in my home, showing the growth of my heart into this space. As they grow, so I have grown. As their beings breathe and exhale the life of this home, so does my Self breathe and exhale the life of this home. I see it. I see and I know the fragility and the meaning.

How quickly a change could blow across all of this! A quick decision could bring us to pack up the life and things into boxes, to truck our bodies across miles into a new place, to market the brick 1970’s building, now rid of its stinking blue carpet and softly clothed in greys and a new kitchen. “Let’s leave the bar stools, they look good with the green wall in the kitchen. It’ll help it sell.” We might say. But the green walls will remember more than they say. They will remember the sock feet and my hands cleaning, touching, painting, loving. Nothing can truly move us away all together. We are left here, though our bodies are in some new place. We have melted into the home with the herringbone tile. The fingerprints will always be in the mud behind the brackets. All my love.