Think Pink

It might be a mid-life crisis

But I simply prefer to call it incentive for the hubster to stay home.

Not-so-Normal

One of the things it seems I am always telling newly diagnosed survivors is that "you have to find your new normal."  Everyone always wants to know when things will just go back to normal, and the answer is simply never.  Now I find myself saying it to...myself.

I'm losing track of days and time.  When I wake up in the morning, I feel compelled to lie aimlessly, watching the sun rise out my window and wish that Craig were here to make me coffee.  It takes time to compel my feet to go to the floor and begin the steps of my day.  Things that were second nature, now require thought.  I make lists, which is normal, but now of almost everything.  I feel that maybe I should add "breathe" to it sometimes so I don't lose that in a fog as well.

The hub of our household is gone, and all of us drift rather aimlessly about.  It's hot and wet; stormy one moment, blazingly sunny the next - typical tropics.  We make plans and adjust them, and sometimes drop them altogether and simply drape across the furniture watching movies or reading books.

Over it all is a quiet pall, a soft fuzziness of unfamiliarity in which I am uncertain what step will be sure and what step will shift under my feet.   

Peace, Joy and Love

My girls are home from camp

this is how I entertain myself when the man is gone (above and below)

And lastly, what I hope to create today:

Friday Felicities and some other stuff

It is customary for mission trips to cause difficulties in your life. I call it warfare.  Call it what you will, life is never easy in the throws of preparation, and I think it is possible that the latest trip that hunky hubby undertook (at 2 am this morning, no less) may have been the most stressful yet.  Six months ago a strong core team of ten was formed.  Over the months various members dropped away (some on more than one occasion) leaving the team with five, yes five members to run a Native American high school age week of summer camp in the mountains of Arizona.

At 9pm last night the phone rang.  The designated driver (the team left from an airport 90 minutes away) was having a family crisis, not to mention her son was one of the remaining four members of the team.  What followed on what should have been a night with an early bedtime and much needed pre-trip rest, was fitful sleep punctuated by numerous phonecalls as we waited to hear what the final Dr's statement would be, who would drive, and whether or not the team would be four or five and most importantly, if said family member in crisis was going to live or die.  The good news is, yes, she will.  We received that news sometime after midnight, and the final team count is again, a whopping five.

I am tired. I am stressed.  I am still so. freaking. sad. And tired. My husband is gone for another two weeks, and this time around is no mini-vacation for me. So, I definitely need some Friday Felicities.

• Rain- it makes my grass grow, my flowers bloom, my heart light.  We needed it; we still need it. I love to hear it dancing on my roof, especially at night.
• My children coming home from camp. I miss them.  I need them.  I cant wait to hear all their camp stories and adventures.
• Organization.  I am SO OCD, but knowing where everything is what is coming next makes me happy, happy, happy, happy.
• My Ipod.  The honeymoon is so not over.  We were a match made in heaven my little pink dispenser of musical happiness.
• Vegetarian Mexican casserole and multi grain tortillas.
• Did I mention my girls are coming home?
• Yarn Yarn Yarn and a movie.

To Begin With

Dear Lindsay, Bailey and Olivia,

A few weeks ago one of my best friends was taken to Heaven to be with God, and though you keep assuring me, Lindsay, that going to Heaven is a happy thing, I still hear you often whispering to yourselves "Mommy's sad, again" when you see my wiping tears from my cheeks that I mistakenly thought I could shed unobserved.  Silly me, because I know that with you three, almost nothing goes unobserved, unanalyzed and even more rarely undiscussed ad infinitum. So yes, you know I am sad, and you see me everyday find Natalie's pictures or listen to my Natalie playlist, you've seen Natalie's pictures on my blog, you remember being in Natalie's hobbit hole last summer, you know the ways I express myself to those I hold most dear.

Before Nattie died she wrote a letter to each of her children, a little piece of herself in case things went terribly wrong.  We live in a world, I am afraid, where things are far more wont to go terribly wrong, in our eyes, at least, than right. I hope you are able to hang onto the knowledge that all things work to the good of those who love Him.   It is a promise to which I have clung desperately these last few weeks, sometimes with less strength of heart than a person with my life experiences should have.  Speaking of life experiences brings me at last to my point of this post and subsequent weekly posts to follow.  I don't know what will happen to me, to you, to any of us.  I know that God has plans for us, but sometimes those plans do not at all resemble what my plans are.  Sometimes we are caught unaware and there simply isn't time left, to say all the things we wanted to say.

I don't want that to happen to me, to us.

I pray that decades down the road finds you reading this and nodding rememberance because we were blessed with a lifetime of moments to share, but I simply cannot promise that will happen, and so I am creating a gift, a legacy if you will, of my words because it is one of the few things I seem to do well without exception (your mother, being hopelessly flawed).  I love words, and I love you beyond words and hopefully somewhere in the middle I can mesh those two things into picture of how important, how amazing, how breath-taking the three of you have made my life.  How even when I tell you to "get in your beds for your own safety" I am singing inside with joy of being allowed to share your lives so pregnant with possibility.

You are my joy, and I want to be sure, no matter what happens, that you  are never left wondering this.  And so I begin Letters to my Children.

My soul says yes to....

Intoxication

This is WONDERFUL.  And I, well I am busy at my book blog.

Quiet Moments of Joy

I have this feeling. I call it my "joy bubble".  There are times when I just get stopped in my tracks and I look around and think, "My life just couldn't get any better than this."  That joy, the contentment, that completeness wells up in my like a bubble, hence the term joy bubble. It happens at the most mundane moments: walking out onto the backporch with my coffee, sitting in bed late at night reading with my husband sleeping beside me, snuggling my babies with morning dragon breath.  It creeps up on me unexpectedly and overwhelms me with contentment that I carry with me the rest of the way.

I'm having a hard time finding that bubble lately.

Today I feel all jumbled up and quirky.  I feel like cleaning to work things out.  I think I shall.

See you on the shiny clean flip-side.

Ones

Ok, you've probably seen it around if you have been following the Nattie tributes. We had a little thing that Natalie started where we would say something and end it with an 11.
It started as a typo but then we made it into "whatever we were saying to the 11th power," so "I love you" is good but "I love you!!11" is WAY better!

My husband just got back from the CIY conference at Milligan college in Tn (he and 81 teens-have mercy).  I didn't know anything about it until he got back yesterday because we have very little contact when he is gone.

This was the theme of the conference:

ONES 2007
In our differences, we are the same. We are a wide spectrum of people, with distinctive traits and talents, each reflecting a different characteristic of God. Each of us is playing a role in a saga so big that it can not be confined by time or space.

In our pockets of isolation, we search for significance and yearn for true community. So we come together, broken and injured, looking for a place to rest. Some come to support, some come to be healed, in coming together, are made whole.

They all come to be known, to matter. We are here as more than just a number or a statistic. We are here because we were created to bring value. We are here to make her laugh, to cause him to think, to convict them, and to grow. Here to be more than just ONE person, ONE failure, ONE sinner, or ONE saint. We are here as a part of the ONES. And we are here…

…Because we were never meant to be alone.

because this : 1 : is how we were made

but this : 11 : is how we should be.

how cool is that?

Simply Peaceful

The view from my hammock in the back yard.  Yes Sir, that is a whole lotta nothin' behind us.

We spent the day at the river and then came home to the hammock.  It's hard work, this relaxing.

More pictures over at Flickr

Simply Held

It's rained the past three days here in Paradise. This is a good thing. We need the rain. I like to sit on the back porch when this happens.  At first the heat is weighty and oppressive but then little gusts of wind flirt with the trees, and then you hear it coming...the wind gusting, the rain sheeting at the wake of the storm.  Inevitably there is then a loud crash that I hear in my head and feel in my feet.  Concussive, like a shove.

I like to hear the rain pounding on the tin roof and cascading out of the gutters.  I like to watch the flowers droop, droop as the weight of the water makes the petals and leaves too heavy to stand upright anymore.  I like to feel the mist of it as it comes through the screen. 

And then in an hour, the clouds roll away, the flowers reach up again to the sky, the sunlight slants through the leaves with a green underwater feel. Far off thunders gently grumble over the ocean and I can imagine the little white wavelets calming, ceasing quieting.

I am reading a lot, averaging a book every day and a half.  There's wine in my cup at night when I listen to the tree frog symphony on the back porch. I sip it slowly and close my eyes and just be for a moment when the kids are quiet and the house is dark.  I don't use lights, but light candles in each room and move like a swimmer barely making ripples in the dark.

I laugh and cry and sing and cook and wash and fold and think and email and read and shower and exercise and eat and sleep and do all the things that the rest of the world is doing everyday.  I am living.  I'm raising my petals to the sun again after the weight of the storm.

This is what it means to be held.