When desperation blinds you…

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Joy

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…

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Joy

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

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Joy

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.

Of harvest and time…

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Joy

2010-09-23 08.23.35

We walked the back field this morning…freshly cut and lying fallow.

The boys ran on ahead, and I marveled at the growth- two boys a whole head taller.

Kairos and chronos time converged in that moment and left me breathless, heart-wide-open.

We scrambled all over this field in the early spring, running the length and breadth, lifting kites high to the wind, rainbows dancing wide arcs. Husband and I laid back on quilt while children gamboled about like lambs, staring at the wide blue, cotton puff clouds lazy floating by. Dreams and prayers circled and rose like the drowsy dragonfly twirling.

Now is the season of work and labor. I found myself wondering as the boys and I traced the back field this morning if my harvest was ready or not. Oh children, it’s so far in the future, you know? But little milestones along the way act like fenceposts to the journey, letting us know of progress. And how they grow, these little men of mine- by leaps and bounds overnight, pants grown to shorts and toes sprouting from shoes.

This summer has brought heavy the weight of responsibility upon me with my boys. My girl too, but my older boys, they grow tall and ask heart-questions bigger than the sky some days. And I realized I was stuck in backwards looking, imagining them always as innocent and in need of my care, and this is ever the opposite in reality. If I was a mother wise, I would be helping them learn to fly, not remembering days of babyhood. And I had not been praying for them as I should have been.

I just (dare I say?) was not paying as much attention as I should have been. Walking the fields and hearts of my older boys lives, I was surprised at the weeds (and fruits too) growing there. This summer has been one of change, of attention, of quiet. And of prayer. Oh, of prayer.

I live so often in Chronos, studying clock, ticking off to do list, rush, hurry, and bustle, but life (and my children) are in Kairos. They are where I belong, theirs is the time I should be living in, and so I have been learning. Learning to say yes, learning to pause, learning to listen, learning to truly hear. Learning quiet attentiveness. I, word-full, have found this so difficult, a strain of muscle not trained properly. The blessings though have been quick and clear, and I am encouraged to continue in the stretch.

But still I wonder. What will my harvest bring in the years to come? Is there still Kairos enough in these ever short years of childhood? Will they know how much I love them? Will they know how much I desire that they love God as I do, that they join in faith with Him? When the time comes, will I have been found faithful?

Transition…

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Joy

n.

Passage from one form, state, style, or place to another.

Passage from one subject to another in discourse.

A word, phrase, sentence, or series of sentencesconnecting one part of a discourse to another.

A modulation, especially a brief one.

A passage connecting two themes or sections.

Music

A modulation, especially a brief one.

A period during childbirth that precedes the expulsive phase of labor, characterized by strong uterine contractions and nearly complete cervical dilation.

I find myself in a place of change. It’s a change wrought over two and a half years of hardship- two and a half years of God taking hold of my life- two and a half years of finding that I belonged to Him and no other. Two and a half years of learning to trust. Two and a half years of learning to let go, lean back, drink of the wild and tremulous love of Christ.

Fingers trace along the line of counted blessings, and I marvel. Can this be? What seemed the darkest days then seems to me now a precious time, paid for in tears and sorrow. We lovers of God- I wonder if we become so mindful of the Glory that we forget the Cross? That we forget the sorrow? He promised there would be much of it in our lives. And yet we wish, yet I wish, to go from joy to joy and glory to glory without the hard and narrow path that leaves blisters and weary muscles. Paul whispers of the long journey, the marathon race- no quick sprints here. Heart heaving, breath catching run that seems to spread out before us, endless. But it does have an end- and will I come to the end with weary muscles but strong heart? It seems there is no path more fitted for strength than that of weakness.

I wonder at this. And I wonder at the place I find myself now. A wonderful place, and yet a strange, terrifying place too. It is time for wings to open, time to set off and fly. I realized rather unconsciously that I had been collecting bird paraphernalia over the last few months- a robin’s nest, tiffany blue eggs, adorns my computer’s desktop. A sweet little carved green bird with swirls sits next to my Bible. My office folders are covered with florals and birds in all manner of flight. Every ATC I make has wings in some sort or another, butterfly wing, bird wing, dragonfly. It is funny how our heart is speaking even when our brain is not attending the messages.

I keep thinking of the idea of transition. Of the curled caterpillar breaking through the chrysalis, of the woman in her travails, ever so close to new life uncurling within her and stretching long…

My transitions in labor have been such a strange place. I do not labor well and always have to be assisted with the drug Pitocin. Once it has been added, the labor progresses quickly, often leaving my unmindful of what is happening within my body. But transition- I always notice it because I begin to cry, seemingly for no reason at all. Of course, science will tell that there is a huge hormone surge at that moment as the body moves into the last stages of labor- but for me, it always surprises. My husband can tell you that transition is always when I, strong and capable, suddenly crumble. I cry and exclaim that I can’t do it anymore, and why can’t the baby just be here? The irony is that it is so very close and the baby will soon be in my arms- but it is almost as if I lose track, grow weary, grow weak. And then suddenly, time to push, and the next thing you know, there is baby. There is life. LIFE!

The comparison is so apt. This gift of transition. This is my scribble here…to mark out this moment. To notice my weakness, to realize that I am moving into a place of joy, and I just need to let go. Need to be weak, need to stretch long, strengthen knee…

and fly.

Small and hidden…

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Joy

It was a normal, every day Wednesday.

The water was bubbling on the stove;

the flag flapped and snapped outside the window;

and the only sound that could be heard was the swish smack of the knife against the potato skin I was peeling.

It had been a quiet and busy day. It was a hidden day. I have been learning to come to terms with this- living in each quiet, quotidian moment, letting it pass by, noticed only by me. It would be hard to explain what I do each day- other than keep my family world spinning- wiping noses and bottoms, teaching concepts, endless loads of laundry, swept floors. Outside my tiny spot on the wide green earth, no one really knows if I do these things, or do them well- and perhaps, it does not matter in the grand scheme of things. I know that it matters whether or not anyone is looking. And it matters whether or not anyone notices and praises me for it. My thanks lie many years down the road, and I am learning to accept that, and joyfully…

It was two days after Memorial Day. Thoughts of Capt. James Howell, his sweet wife, Stephanie, of his two daughters, Harper and Sadie, and the joyful news of twins that they had just received, circled and vied for attention. So too, the lives of the eight men of his company that never returned home from the tip of the spear in Afghanistan last year walked in lockstep through my head, faceless but not forgotten. I breathe a prayer for him and his company as I slice another potato- each morning, his name is one that is whispered heavenward as soon as I can remember. As the skin falls from the potato, I try to let the fear fall as well- for him. For her. For their children. I want, more than anything, for Jimmy to come home, safe and whole. I flinch when I hear of casualties in Afghanistan- I can no sooner imagine how Stephanie feels than what it is like to walk on the moon. Jimmy’s courage and conviction, his integrity- it shines. It shines through Stephanie. His love for her makes her glow luminescent, even on the toughest of days when she is clinging to God and begging that the words she hears are not touching him…

Before I know it, my vision blurs as I am undone by my thoughts of the Howell family. I lay down the knife and stare out at the flag, snapping smartly in the wind…at the emerald green hills and valleys that stretch endlessly away from my window, hardly touched by human hands…

I think of Mr.Chen.

I think of all the brokeness in the world, and of all the men and women who go out into the breach everyday, to stand in the gap- to bind up the broken places, to stand firm. They all, in their own way, stand against danger, within or without- often at great personal cost of their own. All the faceless people who have suddenly come into sharp focus for a broken one, when they were there in the deepest hour of need.

What then shall I do?

I profoundly understand that this is the season for me to be small and hidden, tucked away in the hills of an Appalachian afternoon. It is not for me to run to the breach, to stand on the front lines of warfare, spiritual, mental, emotional. But I can pray. And I can live. I can live my life in honor of those who are, known, or unknown, preserving my own. I can live my life in honor of the One who gave His life. He deserves nothing less. They deserve nothing less. It is enough for me to stand here at my post at the kitchen sink, hidden and unknown. These blessings are mine because of them. To foul them with bitterness, discouragement, and complaining seems a little less than honorable.

The gratitude, and the wonder…

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Joy

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

– G.K. Chesterton

: For new growth

: The chance to begin anew

: the wind and rain, the sun and seed

: the simple pleasure of new (very comfortable) shoes

: to work with our hands

: lightning bugs in the field

: daddy and Eldest and littlest, learning

: for Sabbath and rest

: for family meals together

: for sweet first fruits

: homemade sourdough rolls, fresh from the Mennonites the next hill over

: flowers from my Beloved

: simple candle light

: the gift of ordinary

: for sweet little girl who, when asked for a funny face, gave me this

:kefir smiles

: deep green eyes that watch every move I make

: for pretty floral dresses and the princess that fills the folds

: For smart little boys in matching blue, “because he wears it, I will too”

: For bespectacled owly boy and his contagious laughter

: For the questions (how many!) from Eldest, to ponder and chew (and yes, giggle over too.)

: For the quiet of a weekend holding my family close

The one-piece life…

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Joy

We’re moving. Moved. Moving.

In between?

Between places. But aren’t we always? As nAnCy said, even when we’re buying, we’re really renting.

I can’t describe to you the feelings swirling around my heart right now, but I’ll try.

Free. Released. Unburdened. Unfettered.Unconstrained. Unenslaved.

Released.

We jumped out on faith two months ago, into the wide deep, dark and unclear.

We trusted.

The Lord, He is good. He is trustworthy. He keeps his promises.

I have a certain grandma, whom I love dearest above all. She was my companion and friend through my younger years- I adored going to her yellow sunflower kitchen, eating the lunch made of her hands. I think heaven drops a little closer to that sun filled space. She has been worrying. She knows she shouldn’t, because we serve a great and wonderful God. But she’s my grandma, and she worries just a teeny bit, as a grandma is wont to do.

This bit scratched out is for her. And for me. And for anyone else who worries, just a wee bit. Who has felt the burden of unforeseen circumstances, bad choices, outright rebellion.

The Lord redeems.

He makes new.

I know I haven’t been long in this space, quick updates, promising to tell the stories that fill my days. But now, the dust settles, and I will tell of His glory.

When we were first married, we were young, young, young. Headstrong. Yes, rebellious.

We made the stupidest financial decisions any young couple could make.

We ran up the credit cards.

We spent more than we earned.

In short, we had no idea how to manage our money.

And then, to add insult to injury, we bought a house.

Of course, at the time, we had no clue just how deep in we were.

James had a job that paid enough to cover our mistakes. We were busy. We were young. There are a million different excuses I could give to try to place blame away from ourselves. I could blame it on the shape shifting economy. That wouldn’t be right. We had a responsibility to know, or find the knowledge, to listen to the wise ones, and we tried to feign ignorance, even though we could feel the crunching bands of debt screw hard around our lives. We knew it didn’t make sense. We knew it wasn’t what God advised his people. That should have stopped us cold and it didn’t.

Five little pairs of feet have crossed our threshold since then.

Five very precious pairs of feet. Feet that need guidance, direction, love. And yes, food and clothing and a roof over their heads.

The debt mounted.

The house grew smaller and smaller.

James’ hours at work dwindled as the economy tanked. Soon, the job disappeared all together in a round of layoffs.

That debt, which was a sort of manageable but much disliked fifth cousin of the family that we tolerated and put up with and tried to ignore, morphed into a monstrous crushing hand that kept us up into the wee hours of the night.

Even then, the Lord sustained.

Through the last year and a half, people from all walks of life supported us. A college community group, tight as their budgets were, paid our mortgage for three months running, keeping a roof over our heads. James’ parents. My parents. They didn’t have to help us. There were a million reasons why they could have said, “not right now.” But they didn’t and we walked the darkest year and a half in the company of some amazing people.

But after a year and a half of joblessness, of financial ruin, of seeking God’s face, of asking His will, and looking for a clear sign, we had none.

(We tend to like to ignore the obvious.)

During one of the coldest and most ruinous storms of this winter season, a few days before Christmas, we took a deep heaving gulp of faith-air and jumped.

We sold our way-too-expensive-massively-too-small-brand-newish minivan and bought a used fifteen passenger van Christmas Eve, greatly reducing our car debt. We still have a little way to go, but it is in the getting-paid-off-in-a-year-and-a-half realm instead of six, seven years down the road when that brand new van would be so much junk. I don’t think we’ll ever buy a brand new car again. As a matter of a fact, I intend to drive the wheels off of this van, all the way through teenage-hood for my children and beyond.

Four days after Christmas, we put our house on the market. In the worst economy since the Great Depression. We felt a little bit crazy. We weren’t in foreclosure or anything, but we could barely make the payments on the house included with all our credit card debt, and suddenly, we felt this heavy pressure that we needed to move now, and we did. (I was terrified. Scared. But there were as a part of us too, that felt that things were going to be okay.) Incidentally, my husband and I had been thinking about doing this separately for almost four months. It was a late Advent season date in which one of us finally had the guts to mention it, and then were presently surprised to see that the other spouse had been thinking long and hard about it too! Don’t ever make a financial move as a couple unless both of you are a one hundred percent in agreement. (Boy, have we learned that lesson.)

There was no job in sight.

You know the rest of the story.

God is good, and His love endures forever.

I have walked through the sorrow of losing a child. Of losing my health for an extended period of time. I have walked through the consequences of bad decisions. Oh, my friends, the way seemed so very dark. There seemed no light, no hope.

I am standing in the blazing warmth of the Son’s light this morning.

Free to walk in the one-piece life. To pursue Him. To give freely, because hasn’t He given so much the more? No longer will Satan hold us tied in the inactivity and inability of debt.

Whole cloth, one-piece, room to breathe.

For with our house selling, we have moved into a place of freedom from debt, and it is good.

The Lord is good, and His love endures forever.

A he{art} for Haiti…

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Joy

womenofhaiti

It was during nap time. I was catching up on the mountain of laundry. Fold, flip, hang. Fold, flip, hang. My mind was half on the news, half on the next item on my to do list. Haiti cried out in anguish, and I felt saddness- but also a disconnect. They were not me, I was not there.

Suddenly, her actions echoed mine, her face trailed with tears.

The camera panned out, and I was crying with pent-up grief for the earthquake ruined-Haiti.

It wasn’t the millions of sound bytes that cut through the static- it wasn’t the thousands of news reports breathlessly covering the devastation.

It was the simple poetry of a woman’s face, hands caring for her family, that brought me to my knees.

She was washing laundry. Sitting in the rubble, crying, talking to her daughter, she was doing the one thing every mother does- whatever she can to make her family feel normal. Her house lay in ruin at her feet, and still she cared for her family in the only way she could amidst utter chaos. At that moment, we were sisters. Her burdens, in a sense, became my own. Her countenance is seared on my brain, and I cannot forget her.

—

There are so many ways to help, which is wonderful, but I worry about the long run, when the next tragedy hits and the spot light shifts. I want to help in ways that are sustainable, and donate to charities and ministries that will still focus on and serve Haiti long after the news and multinational organizations have moved on. I’ve linked a ton of different ways in my Google Shared items in the sidebar. I wanted to introduce you to one way that is near to my heart.

Rebecca Sower visited Haiti a few years ago, and was forever changed by what she saw there. She began blogging about what she had seen. Rebecca is an amazing artist; she has inspired me (and many others) over the years with her quiet, elegant, profound way of seeing things that leaves the truth staring right back at you. The way she talked about Haiti was no different. The only reason I really knew anything about Haiti once the newslines blared was because of her quiet honesty over the last few years. She had literally just returned to America from Haiti days before the quake, and a project she had been dreaming about (and blogging about) was suddenly that much more pressing. It’s called Haiti by Hand.

Rebecca tells about it in her own words:

Imagine if you were able to walk right up to a Haitian woman in need and tuck $50 into her weary hand. First of all, you would be giving her enough to feed her family for a long while, or maybe enough to buy fruits and vegetables to start her own business selling in the market, or enough to send her child to school.

This is the driving force behind why I began Haiti By Hand. To bring one American (or European or Australian or Canadian or Russian…) woman directly in touch with one real Haitian woman. To know her story and connect with her. When I was in Haiti just a few days before the quakes, I looked around and realized that I cannot help the nation of Haiti, but I can help one Haitian…and then maybe one more…then one more.

She quickly posted all the art pieces she had brought back from Haiti to a special Etsy store. They sold out. (Each piece was handmade by a Haitian artist- and the money earned goes right back to the Haitian artist.) Soon, other artists joined in, donating pieces to the store for sale. It is blossoming quickly. Please go to Haiti By Hand, and consider what you can do to help.

(Women of Haiti pictures by Rebecca Sower. Used with permission.)

This divided life…

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Joy

I'm headed on a ramble today…

I keep thinking about Ann's phrase, the 'one piece life', and how it relates to burnout. Oh, and before I forget, Elizabeth had this to say about burnout. Go read. I'll wait.

I've set my phone to mark the Hours- The dawn office, morning office, midday, vespers, complines. It's something new I've started recently; a practice I am finding quite fascinating. My desire to start them actually fell somewhere around the same day or two that I sort of 'hit the wall'. I've done the Divine Hours on and off for over two years, but I've never, ever been daily disciplined enough to really pray through them. It was sparked by Ann's discussion of spiritual disciplines during her Walk With Him Wednesday memes. She's covered a lot of ground since she started doing the series. For some reason, reading last week's post made me realize that I am not spiritually disciplined at all. Oh, I know all these things. I should be reading the Bible daily. I should be doing a lot of things in that vein. And I do. But I rarely string four days together of any habit. I get gung ho about stuff, do it well, and then fizzle out.

I had been thinking about this verse (one that Jesus actually quotes to Satan while being tempted):

He humbled you,
causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither
you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on
bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

I realized that I was spiritually starving. I would eat just enough to live, but never enough to really 'fill up the tank', to truly be. Is it no wonder then that my defenses have failed and my wall has fallen, and depression and burnout snuck in?

On the flip side, I'm a mama of five, and quiet does not come often around here. I often let exhaustion or chores or a million other little things crowd out the time. They are pressing things but they are not needful things. I mulled it over for a while and felt like the one practice I really wanted to start cultivating, that I felt like I could do and stick with it for longer than 2.5 seconds, was fixed hour prayer. It felt pretty drastic to me. And I sort of puzzled over remembering when to pray…until I realized I could set multiple alarms on my phone. It even has a bell 'ring tone' that sounds like church bells. So now, at the appointed time, my phone calls out the Hours, and I stop. For about two minutes, I focus on the One thing needful.

Those bells have rung out now for nearly a week and a half. If there is one thing cultivating this new practice has taught me, it is the realization that I tend to live a divided life. This is the 'school day', this is when I do laundry, this is when I am a wife, this is when I am a care taker of my home, and this is when I do things that bring me closer to God. Something about that is so backwards. The Hours teach you this because- well, midday bells ring and I am diapering a child. Vespers ring and I am literally in the middle of making dinner, pot bubbling, chicken sizzling. Smack in the middle of life. Fixed hour prayer creates hard stops in the day while at the same time being smack in the middle of the flow of daily time. It's really made me realize how the physical, quotidian everyday and the heavenly dimension are interwoven with each other. It amazes me how that sudden stop will totally change my direction.

Tonight, as dinner was coming on (we sort of gently call it 'the bewitching hour'), I was rushed. Worried. Trying to figure out a recipe I hadn't tried before. Hoping that Josiah would nap until dinner was done cooking. Wondering if I had switched the laundry. Worrying about family members who are ill. Kids fussing and grumping because they don't want to clean up. Vespers rang. I'll admit I actually huffed and rolled my eyes at my phone. Whoa. That caught my attention. I sorta muttered "one thing needful" under my breath, went and grabbed my prayer book, eyed the dinner, and stopped. And prayed. It only takes the space of maybe a minute, or two? The dinner certainly didn't burn. It was still bubbling away. The interesting thing about the liturgy is that you will read (and pray) a tremendous chunk of scripture each day, a few moments at a time, every few hours. And I need to hear the Word! As I went back to making dinner, my whole outlook had changed. Things were still pressing but I was not rushing and worrying and fretting. I was at peace. I spent those twenty minutes of dinner preparation worshiping while working. I find myself hoping that more of my moments are like that- one piece, instead of two, five, ten…scattered and unmoored…

Memoria.Arts

Category Archives: one piece life