Category Archives: one piece life

Art Friday, Lent, Week 3

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A pouring out. Things spill over. I’ve made an intention to enter my tiny really-a-bedroom studio with prayer, to greet the paint and paper with prayer. To see. To hear. I’ve noticed as the weeks slip one into the next that this has become more than just a thing I do when I sit down to create; it’s beginning to color my entire world. Never before have I committed to a Lenten practice that runs this deep- Fasting in some areas. Cultivating in other areas. And through it all, the quiet.

It’s sad how all the idle, ill-spoken, complaining words will come back to haunt you when you finally still the tongue. I’ve had to repent so much. Ask forgiveness. Confess.

I’m realizing that this is what Lent is about- an emptying out so that we can be filled with God. The way He sees things.

I’ve been thinking about what Katherine had to say this week.

“There’s something about crafting words, something that touches the depths of my heart. But I worry about the words I share and I’m never at peace with them. But it’s this fear and trembling that will protect me from the tempest of my words. Only fools speak free and much. Every time I open my mouth, every time my fingers race across a keyboard, I set my feet on perilous ground. ”

- Katherine Johnson, “Deliver Me From Idle Words”

Please go read the whole article- such meat for thought there. I think it’s not just writing- it’s creating of any sort. It’s our creative act as mothers. As fathers. As friends. Lovers. Sisters. In whole, our lives–will we pour out the grace that has infused our lives and changed us, or will we trip and fall over barriers of our own making, shattering, sending shards of hurt flying?

As an artist and writer, I find myself asking her questions as I enter the creative space:

“Let there be light. When I write, I ask myself, do my words bring forth light in a world veiled in darkness? Let the dry land appear. Do they offer a sure footing for my neighbor or have I set a deadly snare? Let the earth bring forth fruit. Do my words bear fruit in the ones who receive them?”

- Katherine Johnson, “Deliver Me From Idle Words”

 

I pray for my life and my art to be a living peace-giving, a blessing, a spilling out of grace. If so, there is a lot of cultivating in my heart-garden still left, a lifetime of work.

It starts from the center…

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“If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home; and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.” -TS Elliot

Elliot’s words sum up the wanderings of my days- the quiet stretches where the silence lengthens. It is so different to be still; to stand on the beach on watch the waves crash over your feet, instead of bobbing with head barely above water out there in the crashing blue. I’ve understood enough to know now that I need a proper ocean-going vessel. No more desperate dog paddling to nowhere. And the waves crash a rhythm: His love endures forever.

So, to find the boat, the kindling scraps and the big logs to carve into canoe? The next steps. The biggest logs, the Word, strong and true, committed to memory. Studied. I’ve too long let the practice fall. Another scrap I found by serendipity at the library, selected on a whim, and eyed somewhat suspiciously- The Shaping of A Christian Family (Elisabeth Elliot). I didn’t know what to expect.

I began reading it Sunday morning. We were home, missing service, with too many littles coughing and generally germ-y; a gift we thought best not to share. It was like reading a story straight out of Grace Livingston Hill, as Elisabeth describes a life that any heroine of GLH’s might claim. But there was more, pith and bone- talking about how a life is lived. The longer I read, the more I’ve come to a realization that breaks my heart.

I really, really lack discipline.

Reading her words help me understand the why. I doubt I could have heard this admonishment until now; had it come any earlier, I would have immaturely thrust it aside and placed blame on anyone else but my own self. But chastened by my recent experiences, I have ears to hear.

I’ve often heard myself described (at least in the younger years- I wonder to think what people would describe me as now, and yet- too afraid to know) as strong-willed. I’m starting to realize that strong willed is actually defined as someone who can’t control the will- rather, it controls her; to be in control of one’s will would mean (hopefully) anything but strong. A life of quiet certitude.

Lorelei takes ballet with a company now; and while the little ones are just learning the steps and positions, I often gaze into the larger studio, where the company dancers float en pointe to the music for the next performance. I am the little girl shuffling a bit behind the measure- I have so far till I float, but I am realizing with hope, now, that I can learn the discipline the mature dancer holds in her graceful hands. The endless practice. The endless mirroring of the movement of Christ, watching, just so, each time, improving, each time, bringing my will under His. He is the dance; I must learn it.

I’ve watched the girl-women dancers, on the edge of their adulthood, reaching over and over again, stretch-long. They tip from heel to toe and back down again, sometimes in such cadence that the music is accompanied by a steady swish, soft thud. A heart beat. Arterial song. I can hear it now. Spin from the center. Keep your eyes fixed. Lean back into the joy. Dance.

When desperation blinds you…

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I want to say this, before I forget…before it slips into mist and memory…

It wasn’t the job. It was me. And I would never call into question or judge a mother who pursues employment. That is not what is at issue for me here, at this way station in seasons.

Beware desperation.

I’ve whispered of it here and there, but we’ve faced a mighty battle with debt- particularly student loans. It was precipitated by two years of unemployment. All in all, our nightmare has lasted just about three and a half years. It began not four weeks after losing our fifth child to miscarriage. I have known the darkness, the inky black night, the shadowy whispers of pain that blind.

But He promised us that He was mighty to save. And He has. And He will.  Yet- somewhere in the middle, I kept company with Sarai and Hagar, Abram and Ishmael. I lost confidence in my Lord’s will, and I thought I could fix things. And so, as Sarai sent Hagar to Abram, I sent ‘a promising email’ to my husband, a job, a work from home position. My beloved had reservations. Many. And I, in my desperation, shoved past the red flags of wisdom crying out for attention. This is not to say that some sort of employment was ahead for me, or that He had provisions waiting for us if we had trusted His timing…but I can tell you even then, we knew this job was not the wisest course of action for our family. I ignored it.

I would spend the next year and a half trying to find a balance that could not be found. I lost perspective, lost purpose- I would care for our family from dawn until dusk, and then would work from dusk near to dawn again, each precious hour of sleep and clarity slipping into the darkness, never to be retrieved. Chronic exhaustion takes its toll; depression soon became my constant handmaiden and companion.

I cannot emphasize this enough, dear friends. I don’t care what vocation you pursue, but if you sacrifice the rest our wise and gracious God has ordained for us, something is not as it should be. If it’s a constant, instead of an occasional, occurrence, check your heart-call. I have serious doubts that the Lord would call you to a task that includes such a thing. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. In Christ’s ministry, there was always a balance between rest and action. Always. If things are ridiculously hard, if you’re making decisions that are totally contrary to your heart, maybe the Lord is creating the friction to call you back to His purpose.

I speak from my life. I should have heard Him clearly when I fell so ill last year. It’s almost laughably obvious. I fell so ill quite simply because my body could not run on fumes—and yet—I would go on to work for the company for another year. A year. And I could not understand why I could not heal, why I could not get well. But I wouldn’t stop. For another year. I have paid the price. I will probably never be as healthy as I was before I began this job, unless the Lord sees fit to restore what the locusts have eaten. I will spend the rest of my life caring for my body because I nearly destroyed it in desperation.

Oh, that I were not so stubborn! The Lord needed a two by four to smack me across the back of the head, and so, late at night on a family outing to a local Christmas light show, I missed the (rather obvious) hitch point protruding from the back of my fifteen passenger van, tripped…and shattered my wrist. My right wrist, my dominant hand. I could no longer work in any capacity- I could not type. I could barely dress myself, comb my hair. And then—I finally heard Him. I submitted my resignation within days. I will always see my deformed wrist now, and think of Jacob and the angel of the Lord and Jacob’s thigh… I will bear the mark of stubbornness the rest of my days.

I beg you, dear friends, to trust in the Lord and lean on His understanding, and acknowledge Him in all your ways. Don’t ever get to the point of desperation that you feel that you must trade your heart and body. Debt is awful, but it is never worth that. It’s never worth running ahead of God. But- if you have found yourself right-tangled, as I have, know that He is might to save, and He will not forsake you. Confess, repent, and trust. The storm will still rage, perhaps even for a long time- but He will be with you.

Here I stack these stones, mark an Ebenezer. May the Lord in His grace lead me away from this place of sorrow.

One wild and precious life…

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I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver, excerpt of The Summer Day

Late August to me breathes more of rebirth than any New Year’s Day. My life so far has been linked with school in one way or another, first as a student, and now as a teacher of my own little crew- and that is when all is fresh and new to me. I always found New Year’s Day a tiny bit odd, because it comes in the middle of things- the middle of winter, the middle of the school year. The school year begins as a new season begins, crisp and golden and fresh.

Late August is also when we lost our fifth child, far too early, far too soon. There is a small part of me that dwells across the river in the late weeks of August, wondering what heaven has wrought, imagining how tall, how grown, that wee one would be now. It’s hard not to when reminders are all about- when Elliana lies curled at breast, Josiah laughs his gurgle of joy that is not so baby any more and a lot more boy, when my tall boy-man Ben asks a question loaded with curiosity. The grief fades with time, but the mama heart will always see and remember.

So here I am, at this pause-point. Looking ahead. Paying attention. My biggest regret in the three intervening years since losing the baby (and coming close to death myself)- and while I understand I was sick much after that- is that I did not live. I just shut down, lived on the edges of life. It’s so noticeable to me now that I am feeling better all the way around…chronic sickness truly effects emotions in ways I think we barely understand. BUT- I feel there was a choice to be made somewhere back there, and I made the wrong one. I can’t recover those years in that sense-my prayer is that the Lord will redeem what the locusts have eaten.

I do have the year before me- and I can make a choice going forward. Will I be at peace? Will I choose to praise? These are the questions before me.

Our learning days have begun, and I find a peace in them that I have not experienced since beginning the homeschooling journey. I begin to think that I am perhaps a bit hard headed or dense, because I have begun four year running now- fresh off of re-reading Elizabeth’s Real Learning and Sally’s Educating the Wholehearted Child- all agog at the wondrous things we would learn together, my children and I- only to feel the pressure and burn out within days, if not weeks.

It’s only taken me four years to finally understand the heart of what both Elizabeth and Sally have been trying to wheedle through my head- it’s not about learning (although it is a part). It’s not about organization (although that is a part too). It’s about discipleship, but even more so, it’s about getting out of the way by trusting God and holding to Him first! It is truly letting go so that God can work in our children. I have heard all of the practical advice about homeschooling- what the best curriculum might be, how to order the days, etc, and failed to listen to the other side of the equation- that One that makes it all add up. Prayer. Committing the plans to the Lord. Listening carefully to the Spirit.

Attention. Paying attention.

Something my willful still-teenaged heart has rebelled against.  To pay attention means to slow. Paying attention is at odds with running around with one’s head cut off, my favorite mode of transport- isn’t it yours too? It is with tongue-in-cheek that I laugh at myself,  because to think otherwise might bring me to tears for my foolishness. As long as I am running around, chicken little like- I have this rather misguided sense that I am in control. Look at me, I am busy! I am a mama of six! I homeschool! I work full time! I do this and that and blah and blah and on and on. Prideful much? But holy moly, you crawl into bed at night plum exhausted and worried sick about the things you see in front of you- this son not doing this well, that attitude issue, I forgot to get the groceries, and round and round till the clock ticks four am.  And the whole time- the answer is right there- stop. listen. Let go. But I’d rather feel like a string wound tight than give up control, fall free into grace, and find peace.

I think what bothers me is that each of those things in my life- mama, wife, teacher- are well and good. But I make idols of them far too often, and in so doing, fail to mother, fail to love well, fail to light the fires of learning- because I am so busy putting out petty fires and cleaning up messes that I started and made in the first place!

I have come to realize that in order for me to live my one wild and precious life, I have to slow down, mise en place, and stop the rush forward and the head-long glances back. It is no wonder that I stumble, because my eyes are never fixed on the path I am walking! I need to fix my eyes on Him. Mouth to prayer, ears to the Spirit, eyes to the Word. That is my plan for this homeschool year…

Finding Home: Money is NOT Your Master, the College Edition

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 I can’t answer whys or wherefores until I double down on this: Money is NOT your master. Money makes fools and hamsters running on wheels; money is why it took an emergency admission to the hospital for me to finally understand a lesson I’ve been running from for nearly ten years.

You’re not going to get lots of dollars and sense in this post. Well, maybe you’ll get sense, but not advice on how to stretch a dollar. There are plenty of bloggers to find that can explain it all so much better than I can. What will you get is a full confession. I’ve had more than a few friends tell me to write this: I dive in with trepidation.

When my husband and I were married, we entered into our marriage with absolutely zero understanding of how money works. We came from a legacy of bad money management in both sets of our parents (and they would freely admit this, so I do not worry about mentioning it here): both sets are now entering retirement with no real savings and a legacy of high debt.  As far as money education went, we had only the basic ideas of how to balance a checkbook. Budgets sort of made sense, but we’d never seen how one worked- we were pure babies.

We met in college. Herein is where the lesson lies- if you leave this page with any take away- this is it. TEACH your children. GUARD their finances, particularly as they enter college. LET THEM TRY in a safe setting, where the consequences aren’t catastrophic. KEEP HELPING until they get it. DON’T make money emotional; if they blow it on a Wii game, teach them to try again until they get it, while they are still safe in the harbor of YOUR finances. KEEP IT SMALL, and then let them try at bigger things, like paying the household bills from your checkbook as you watch over their shoulder.

Why?

Because I’ve been walking this road for ten years, and I’ll be dogged if I’m not gonna put some road signs up for travelers following after me.

I’m not blaming our parents; they had as little money education as we had, so it’s no surprise they made many of the mistakes we were doomed to repeat. The only mistake our parents made was to make money an emotional thing, but hey- it’s a mistake we all make because we all forget that money is NOT our master. Money is heavily laden (pun intended)- it represents us, whether we want it to or not- we measure ourselves by its dollar signs- are we worth it? It is mine, isn’t it? I want to drive that car, I need this house, because my worth is measured by the money that I (or my husband) makes. We cringe to realize we don’t make as much as Joe; we smile to realize we make more than Jane. It’s so ingrained. And frankly, I am not sure how to break that cycle- and I’m preaching to my own self here…but…in both our parents’ case…money was a deep dark mysterious thing that One Never Talks About. It’s kind of right up there with the Birds & The Bees talk.

By the time my husband and I married, two years into college, we held around $20,000 dollars in student loan debt, and about $3000 in credit card debt. Neither of us had held more than a part time job. The scary thing is? This happens on every college campus in America, every day. Looking back, I can’t believe how absurd this is. Seriously- could you or I walk into a bank right now and get a loan or a credit card with no credible income? Do you know that college students walk into Financial Aid everyday and sign their lives away, often to the tune of often $50, ooo plus? It’s a shiny little thing called the Stafford Loan, subsidized by the government. It’s got really decent rates- usually 4 or 5%- and a LONG lifetime. Terms start at 20 years. You can’t ever lose it, either- it stays even through bankruptcy proceedings. You’ll be on the hook for it no matter what.

When we graduated, my husband and I had over $98,000 in student loan debt. That was combined; ours is actually kind of low for your ‘typical college grad’ these days. It’s not unusual for one student to have those kind of numbers. Our mortgage was less than that; it was $94, ooo at the start, and by the time we sold the house, it had worked into the high $80s. We held nearly $10,000 in credit card debt at absurd rates- 24% was the average. I can still walk on my old alma mater and get accosted with credit card offerings in about ten minutes. The temptation is absurd and the balance offerings high.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, which no one wants to read, I’m sure- our debt to income ratio upon my husband’s graduation was over 80%. Imagine a pie chart  3/4ths full and then another fourth- that’s the money we actually lived on; the rest of the pie went straight to student loans. Our car payment, mortgage, food, gas and everything else came out of the last little chunk. Does it make your stomach spin? Imagine what your finances would look like, those of you who have been around for a while- if you carried that kind of load? BUT that is precisely what is happening to college students on a daily basis. They have no idea that they are signing their lives away. Well, some lucky few might, but they still feel like they HAVE to because everyone needs a degree to get a job. I laugh sardonically as I write this, because has anyone seen the economy lately? Thankfully, my husband is in a good field with decent pay; I can’t imagine what it would be like for your run of the mill student with a humanities degree (not teaching) , or heaven help them, a business degree…

If I were to walk in a bank right now, prove my income, have my credit checked (and the same probably goes for you, dear reader) what loan or credit card you received, if at all, would be directly dependent on that little debt to income ratio. They’ll turn you down or charge you extremely high fees if that ratio is too high, because there is a real danger that you might not be able to pay. Why on earth, then, do we give students absurd high loans- with payments that might run into the thousands at the end, when they have NO idea what they’ll be making after graduation, or if they’ll even have a job? Even now, our student loan payments together are almost double our rent, and we’ve been paying the loans for five years or more.

We would have never, ever, ever, taken out those loans as students if we had even the smallest inkling of what they actually meant. And I hope, by telling my story, I’ll save someone else from heartache. I’ll explain more of the lessons I learned about money NOT being my master in the following days.

 

 

 

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