Pockmarks and Audacious Grace

As I was making my way up the dimly lit porch steps, carrying dirty paper plates and left over apples and popcorn, the remains of yet another harvest dinner ate in the car, I had a strong knowing wash over me that I needed to pray with the girls.   We are far from a routine-oriented family, even on the slower days. We don’t have bedtime rituals of baths or stories or family prayer that we go through every night. Some nights we sit and sing songs. The girls taking turns choosing, or Dave and I suddenly belt out a chorus we know by heart from days gone by. Other nights we read a few pages from our Jesus Storybook Bible (My favorite!) or another book nearby. Many nights we’ve allowed playing or dinner time chatter to linger a little too long so we hurry them through the bathroom, wrap them up in blankets with kisses and quick back rubs and whispered good nights and hustle down to pack lunches and pay bills.

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During harvest, I fly solo at bedtime. It’s a season where everything gets stripped down to basic needs. There isn’t time or energy for extras. I depend on the girls to get their pjs on and clothes put away by themselves while I clean up dinner. I quickly brush Sami’s teeth and we hurry to grab sleep caps and dim the lights. If we’re not too far from our 8:30 target, I’ll sometimes scoop up Sami, all cocooned in her pink blanket, and we’ll go sit on Cy’s bed to spend a few final moments of the day together. I knew as I was carrying in the last load from the car, I needed to make time for such a moment, tired and irritated as I was. There had been a barrage of poor choices from one in our party through the day. I knew praying over her could accomplish what no amount of lecturing could.

  Once upstairs, I saw the clothes still strewn I had requested multiple times be put away. Sami was jabbering at a volume far higher than necessary for proximity, and managed to abruptly burp mid-sentence. Twice. The words “Just go to bed” were on my tongue. 13 hours and counting of meeting needs, and I was overdone. But something held them back. I sighed, desperate for the quiet of my room, but knowing only a few tiny minutes can sometimes make all the difference. The Kingdom of God is often revealed in a five minute pause at the end of a day full of faults.

  We sat in the dark on Cypress’s bed. The Bible app read Psalm 23 audibly from my phone. A curly-haired head rested on each of my legs, bodies under a mound of blankets. After the second time through the Psalm, I began to pray. I prayed for them by name, for their individual needs. That they would learn to love truth and become trustworthy. That they would be strong enough to ask for help and not potty their pants. I committed them again to God’s hands, where not even Satan’s slickest schemes can get to them. I applauded the work God has begun in each, the dignity and strength he is continuing to perfect in Cy. The security and compassion he is so beautifully working in Sami. And, as has marked every prayer of mine for the past 3 years, I pleaded with God to affirm in their hearts how loved they are by me, even when I’m such a mess at showing it. In my most used phrase of motherhood prayers, I asked him to cover every sin I’d committed against Cypress, and against Sami with his grace. As I said the words, a phrase of scripture I hadn’t thought of in a while settled in my thoughts. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”.

  I’d never known abounding sin until motherhood. As I quoted the line aloud, I had a vision flood the darkness behind my eye lids. I saw a pockmarked ground, barren white, marred with ashen holes gouged from screaming anger, from sharp words, from rough hands, from unrealistic expectations. Into each hole was poured this golden sand. It didn’t just merely cover the holes. It filled the black caverns and heaped up over each hole, making shimmering mountains where once was a blackened crater.

  Tears poured from my face and onto the heads that were motionless on my lap, completely calm and quiet even though mommy’s prayer was getting some decent yardage to it. All this time I’ve prayed for my sins to be covered, which honestly feels like way too much to ask. To really expect a complete covering when I’m racking up errors faster than I can count some days is audacious. But the clear message to me in the dark was, “Carrie, I’m not just covering the mistakes, the wounds your anger and reactions have made in these girls. I’m filling them up and heaping them over. And not with cheap fill dirt, either. It’s gold. Glittering grace.”

  “It’s too much, too undeserved, too good to be true!” I said. “But I’m opening my hands. I receive it.” To even say the words and weakly believe them validated this grace, scandalous as it all is. The goodness and mercy that have been chasing after me, even through the long months of darkness when I refused to accept I could ever be loved again and was too strangled by shame and depression to accept the forgiveness and affection offered me, they have cracked open the cellar door of darkness with their persistence, loosened the noose of shame.

  And just for added proof, a tangible gift for my flickering faith, I looked down through my tears to two sets of adoring eyes. Two hands patting me, two voices whispering, “I love you, Mommy.” If that isn’t golden, glittering grace, I don’t know what is.

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But where sin increased and abounded, grace (God’s unmerited favor) has surpassed it and increased the more and superabounded. ~Romans 5

If the cellar door still has you locked in darkness, if you feel like you’re too big of a mess, too far gone, too much of a wreck to forgive, please know that you are not alone. Let me remind you that there is nowhere you can go that quarantines you from God’s presence. His goodness and mercy are relentless. Will you hold on to even a spark of hope today? When the door to your darkness cracks, you will have light to share with someone else. The hope I'm speaking today I may need you to speak to me tomorrow.

And if you have a story of abounding, scandalous grace, will you share it with us?

Why You Should Get A Dog

She had her belly split wide open last week, two incisions red  against her white fur. I stood beside her as the injections made quick work, causing her worried eyes to glaze over, and her head to droop and then fall onto her paws. It was an absurd sight, her vigilant face suddenly sound asleep on the cold metal table.

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When I came back, she was huddled in a cage, disoriented by medication and cocktail of smells. We lifted her carefully into the car, and as always, she stood looking out the window the whole way home. Sheer determination or an avoidance of the pain of lying down kept her upright, but this time there was no smiling, panting face hanging over the back of the seat. We made a bed for her in the laundry room. I had to convince her to lay down. She would close her eyes and then suddenly sit up wide-eyed. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be her. Still disoriented from anesthesia. Terribly thirsty. Two slices on her stomach, hours fresh.

  I wondered what it must feel like to experience such suffering with no explanation. No words. No way to ask for an extra pillow, or a spoonful of ice chips. I wanted to brush it off with “she’s just a dog”, and convince myself it surely must mean her suffering was less intense. But her desperate eyes told me otherwise. They would open abruptly and stare long into mine. She is the epitome of long-suffering. I’ve been by her side after a neighbor’s shotgun filled her back end with birdshot. I’ve watched her get an ingrown dewclaw cut out. I’ve seen her gaunt from days with no food. And in the hours and days following her surgery, she was the same as always. Not one whimper. I’ve never heard her yelp. She doesn’t cry or bark or growl or whine. She endures in silence. I laid beside her in the laundry room. She rested with her head on my hand. There was not even the sound of a pant or sigh, her whole body was engaged in the silence of suffering. The only movements were her eyes following me, and the shaking of her abdomen, the bruised and swollen skin flinching if the blanket so much as brushed it. As I lay there watching her, my stomach aching at the thought of what hers must feel like, imagining how frantic I would be if I knew I had a whole night to spend alone in the dark on a tile floor in pain, I realized the one aspect of suffering that dogs are free from: dread. She had no dread of 3 am desperate thirst, or 7 am burning pain when she would have to get up and walk herself outside. She was just enduring the moment. Taking comfort from my presence in the moment. She can cope with suffering because she only has to carry one moment’s worth. No reliving the horrors of the operating table, no dread of tomorrow’s soreness and nausea. Just the pain of right now. Today she’s bouncing around chasing blackbirds out of the freshly harvested corn, standing guard of the house when the semi and tractors pull in, tail wagging everywhere she goes, a white flag of peace and happiness. She has no worry about last week’s surgery results. She entertains zero concerns about how numbered her days are, how many more ailments may await in her near future. In the context of bearing life’s burdens, she is “just a dog”. But really, isn’t that what we love the most about our friendships with these furry, rowdy, behind-sniffing creatures? Their ability to live in the moment that is so incomprehensible to us? Whatever moment they’re in, they are fully committed. If it’s fetching or eating or sleeping or suffering, they are fully present in the moment, no worry for the future, no regret of the past. (Unless the previous moment was full commitment to frolicking in the trash, and now Mom’s home and shouting “Mess!”. At this point there may be regret, but I doubt it. I think it’s simply momentary sorrow because Mom’s mad. But tomorrow sorrow will be forgotten and trash frolicking will sound like a swell activity again.) There is about as much chance of humans being able to fully live in the moment as dogs do, as there is chance of dogs being able to worry about retirement as humans do. Our brains are wired differently, and for good reason. But I think about life differently when I’m with Jazz. I think about how I want to fear pain less, take hard things a moment at a time. I want to run and laugh and enjoy the sunshine or the rain or the blackbirds with freedom. Free from thoughts about what I did wrong yesterday, what might go wrong tomorrow. I guess the moral of the story is, if you don’t have a dog, you should get one. They are brave and funny and more present in the moment than any creature I know. Plus they’re really soft.

Boots and Stuffed Manatees

I was just drifting off when I heard the spoon in my ceramic mug move. Cereal is my bedtime snack of choice, and it’s best when eaten out of a ceramic mug. The mug was on my night stand, a few inches from my bed. My eyes popped open when I heard the small but distinct sound of metal on glass. Ebby was a dead weight at my feet. Dave had taken his snoring self out to the couch (as he does many nights to make peace with my fragile sleeping abilities and his tossing /snoring/shouting habits). So I knew it wasn't him trying to steal my phone charger.

I told myself I was dreaming and tried to go back to sleep.

As I started to doze off again, I heard something under the bed. I froze, and put my feet on Ebby to see if she was itching or something. I asked her if she heard it, but she was dead to the world. Guarding is not her strong point.

I lay motionless.

And heard an undeniable scratching.

I flew as if launched by a slingshot straight out from blankets and landed half way across the carpet. I lunged for the light switch and looked under the bed just in time to see a dark shadow flee beneath my night stand and confirm one of my worst nightmares.

My vulnerable face had just been inches from a rodent.

The bedroom, my place of solitude and escape, was suddenly a disgusting, violated, mouse-infested sty. The survival part of my brain that turns red with flashing "Danger! Danger!" Signs lit up like the fourth of July, and fear gripped me and shook me silly. It missed the memo that the threat was only 4 inches long and harmless. When panic overtakes a body, those primal psychological and physical responses do as they will with little to no heed given to rational or voluntary controls.

When my fleeing feet landed me wailing on Dave's sleeping body, my whole being shook like I'd just escaped the clutches of the Grim Reaper himself. I clenched Dave's hands so tight he flinched.

Fear is like pain, it shows up in all kinds of ways; nagging, sharp, paralyzing, and wildly out of control. And there’s a whole spectrum of intensity that makes it impossible to accurately compare one person’s exact feelings to another. I’m still figuring this out, how we can’t really make any claims on someone else’s pain or fear, because it is so individually unique.

Ironically, as much as I feel out of control fear over a few things like mice and puke, and carry with me a shadow of anxiety most days, I have found myself scoffing at others’ fears. “Seriously, how can it be scary to pet a little shark in the zoo pool?” “What is your problem? It’s just a nice little dog!” I re-heard some of my own words when I was cowering under Dave’s sleeping bag while he went to investigate.

“You know they can’t hurt you, Carrie,” he said. Getting hurt by them was the least of my concerns. When I said so, he asked what I was afraid of. I can’t explain. There is no rationale for this fear. No amount of persuasion can talk a person down.

I’m not here to wrap up the story with some simple fear solutions. I’m so often gripped by it, I hate it, and I wonder, especially after weeks like this, if there’s more I should be doing to combat it. I’m talking about it because saying things out loud is a pretty good way to find out you’re not as alone as you feel, which is a real throat punch to the shame voices.

If you’re one who feels the bone-aching fear hijack your person from time to time, maybe this will remind you that you aren’t alone, maybe something I say will help silence the shame you’re listening to. If you’re not one who’s a victim of hulk sized fear, I’m glad you made it this far and maybe this will help you in relating to one of your people who likely does experience it.

Here are some things I’ve concluded from this week: Acknowledging the frustration, both of the one gripped by fear and the one whose hand is being squeezed to death, is better than accusations. I’m frustrated because I feel a total loss of self-control; the shaking, the tears, the nausea, the absolute inability to function in the presence of these disgusting little creatures. A major looser status takes over my brain.

I certainly don’t feel better about myself when one darts by my feet and I bolt from the bathroom, slamming the door back and hitting my 3 year old’s head as I go, leaving her hysterical- not because she saw a mouse- but because her head and feelings are hurt by my carelessness. I think I would throw myself in front of a train for her? Run into a burning building for her? Place my head between a loaded gun and her? Yet something as minuscule as a mouse has me not only leaving her in the dust to fend for herself, but also giving her head a blow in the process. It sure as heck doesn’t make a strong case for fierce, protective Mama Bear.

I know a little about various psychological theories for addressing fear. But sometimes it seems like it’s good to ease up on the analyzing of where the fear originated, what might be wrong in my brain, and what treatment might free me, and spend time thinking about how to be honest and gentle, how to receive grace within these weak moments.

Like when Dave looked at me, shirt soaked in tears and snot, erupting in raw emotion like he’d never seen, and didn’t scoff or try to talk me out of my feelings, but rather said,

“I’ll sleep by you wherever you decide feels most safe”.

He didn’t complain when I gripped his arm with both hands until I fell asleep. He did, however, point out that I love animals of all sorts, and mice were just scared little animals. “They’re not animals, they’re Satan’s spawn!” I retorted. But I felt mad at my own inconsistency. I take pictures of neighborhood ground hogs and give them nicknames, for crying out loud. Last summer I brought a dying squirrel in the yard fresh water and a blanket.

There is no rationale.

One of my friends (who’s seen more than most of the hard and soft and slightly rotten pieces of my soul and yet keeps showing up), was over when I had the bathroom encounter and left Sami behind for mouse bait. She saw my wide-eyed gasping and when I said “I saw one”, she said “Where?” and started moving toward it before I’d even answered. She calmly searched the scene and led my sobbing baby down for me to comfort. After she heard the full details of my yellow-bellied behavior, said “You did good, now you go outside and cry or whatever you need to do.”

My littlest siblings came to help clear cupboards and set traps one night. Dave was going to be working until nearly midnight, and I knew I didn’t have the strength to handle bedtime and a dark evening alone.

I was frayed to the point that feeling my own hair fall on my shoulder was making jump and sweat.

When I got home, Landon and Kj had already checked all cupboards and bathrooms. They stepped in to help me get the girls tucked into bed. And when we went to the kitchen to clean up and heard shuffling in the snack cupboard, Kj moved towards it as I rapidly backed away. Landon, the sibling of mine most acquainted with feelings that get too big to handle, looked at me with tender-edged amusement and said,

"You can just go outside.” I didn’t need to be told twice. I took the dogs out and sat on the hood of my car, because I’m pretty sure even the grass was infested.

While I am thankful that thus far my girls haven’t seen my full-force hysteria, I’m not pretending I’m not scared. I do worry that they will inherit my fear issues, and I work hard to save my breakdowns for times they aren’t present, but I don’t think false pretenses will do them any favors. So when the moments are calm, I tell them about my fears, how it feels inside to be very, very afraid. I hope it gives them language and courage to express it when they feel its grip.

We talk about how we get to take turns being brave for each other since our fears are all different. They see my eyes darting around to every corner, how I walk with curled toes. Sami saw me hesitating at the bathroom where we’d had the utterly non-heroic incident the day before, and said “Mom, the mouses went away! I like to pet mice. And I like to pet cats and frogs and praying mantises. But not dead praying mantises.”

Everywhere I turn in motherhood, the message seems to be “bend your knees.” Bend low to receive their forgiveness time after time, kneel to their level and allow their hands to wipe my tears, admit my wild fears and receive their words of comfort and courage. It’s so upside down from what I’d imagined.

And Jesus says “mmmhhhmmm!”

Yesterday I wore my knee high riding boots all day. Faux leather can do a lot for cringing and curled toes. The girls were thoroughly impressed by my clipping around the kitchen while I cooked dinner. The boots gave me the boost of confidence needed to show up and feed and bathe and bed down the kids on my own again.

My friend told me this week about how her daughter, typically a carefree socializer, has suddenly been afraid to leave her side, even for a fun morning with friends. It seems fully out of character, and there is no clear explanation her sudden anxiety. This week, when it was time for her to go to preschool, my friend said her daughter asked if she could take her blanket and favorite pet manatee to school. My friend said as long as she left them in her backpack, she could take them with her. Her daughter was so relieved to stick her two favorite things in when it was time to go. A few tears welled up but didn’t spill over, and she waved goodbye just a little bit braver with her blanket and her manatee on her back.

When you’re four maybe it’s a stuffed manatee. When you’re 28 it might be faux leather boots. Of course I knew the boots wouldn’t change much of my panicked reaction if an intruder appeared. They just help me show back up, and I suspect that has a lot more to do with bravery than we tend to think.

Maybe courage is about more than just being fierce and unshaken when the really hard things do happen. Maybe it’s as much about dusting off, wiping tears, and showing up again because there is more of life to be lived, there is hope for better days.

Maybe it’s more about being honest, admitting the things that do knock us down and flood us with fear and drive us to flee the scene, lowering down to receive the kindness of the people near us, and then standing up to offer the same kindness when they’re flattened from something that seems insignificant to us.

If you’re feeling the paralysis of a hulk sized fear, I hope you turn away from all the shame talk and allow yourself to be loved by your people a little more, accept their warm grace, even in your wildest moments, without thinking too long or hard about it (overthinking grace never does us any favors).

If you have a story to share of fear or grace or courage, I’d love to hear it!

Keep showing up,

Love C

When Your Head Holds You Hostage

You know those days when you've watched just one too many Jimmy Fallon YouTube videos? Or spent one too many minutes researching the different types of sweat bees? No? Well then, lucky for you in escaping the dreaded brain rot, but I must confess it leaves me to wonder, is all that ambition and list crossing off really worth missing The Tonight Show Hashtags? And can you really feel good about not knowing how to identify which sweat bees are the stinging kind? Some days it's like just a little too much of the reading or the watching or the listening or the pondering happens, and suddenly, there's no snapping back to reality. I call it stuck in my own head. I tend to go around the house with a blank look while an inner voice in an annoying monotone says "You're so stuck in your own head. You're giving yourself claustrophobia. Get out of your own head." The speaker is painfully redundant, and really not helpful.

Today I fogged over by draining one too many sunny Saturday minutes into a video series. Educational as it was, I gorged and stood up feeling fat and lazy. Too much information, even good information, is like too much good food, suddenly switching from an energy source to a sluggish slow down.

Any time I over-consume and under-create, my mental muscle tone diminishes and leaves me listless. It needs a balance between intake and fuel burn. This week I mentally overate. I pounded 13 chapters in a new book, listened to as many chapters in a different audio book, and took 8 pages of notes from an online video course.

Harvest tends to drive me to over-consume in all departments. My general lack of interest in shopping is suddenly interrupted by a variety of "impossible to pass up" deals on fall tops and boots. (This is partly because my body is intuitively aware of the sinking temperatures, and being convinced that it was never meant to experience temperatures under 50*, it goes into primal survival mode. Buying sweaters and boots is simply my body's way of trying to store up warmth for winter. It's truly instinctual, Dave. It just wants to live to see another Spring, bless its heart.) Kitchen passes to the chocolate and cereal areas happen in much higher frequency. And I start pawing through all available books and reading material. The urge to pass the time, to fill the void of limited adult human contact, to drown out the loneliness, is high during harvest. But bingeing can happen in any season, with the right combination of boredom, avoidance, or lack of vision.

It seems like in all areas of life we get off kilter when we are only consumers and not creators. Really, is it any surprise to find ourselves molding around the edges when all we've been doing is taking and not giving? Still, it's not easy to counter. The last thing I feel like doing while stuck in a brain funk is to create. My thoughts are anything but fresh and coherent. I'm way too full for anything to even sound or smell good anymore. And I'm convinced that whatever I do will look like a train wreck in a tunnel and then I'll feel even more miserable, so why try?

Today I tried a variety of activities in an attempt to escape the muck. I ordered boots. (Really Dave, you'll be so impressed at the good price I found on necessary protection for frostbite-scarred toes.)  I knew going for a run would help, but the helpfulness tends to be dampened when kids accompany, and I had no current alternatives. I ate plantain chips heaped with almond butter. I laid on the sunny patch of carpet hoping for a beam of vision.

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I checked my room and closet repeatedly for anything shiny to capture my attention. I decided maybe eye drops would help. (Now looking back, that may have been the turning point.  Nothing feels better to the window of the soul during soybean harvest then a cool, refreshing Opcon-A drop. It may have the power to change the course of your day, even your life! [These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA].) Then I tried curling my eye-lashes. This turned out to be more of a setback. Perhaps due in part to the significant dew still residing on lashes from recent eye drop splash, the curling was unsuccessful. After a half a dozen tries, they were far more straight than when I'd started. I can only choose to be thankful for the UV protection I now have from my sun visor-like mini eye shades. Eventually, I drug my lawn chair out to where the sun was warming the walk, sat down with my laptop, and did the only other thing I knew to do; string words together to create sentences and paragraphs. And, as is always the case, it did for my brain what a heavy rain does for a stagnant pond. It washed the scum off the top and made everything clearer.

If you're one of us that finds yourself entrapped in your own head from time to time, what do you do to clear the scum? Have you found creating to be the solution? If so, what do you like to create? And how do you convince yourself to get started when all your mind wants to do is suck it's thumb and rock?