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There are dates on the calendar every year when we pause to remember some thing, some event, some one. Some of us have calendars littered with ink, and others of us keeping with a digital revolution get notifications with the sound of a small bell and a reminder.
Yet some days, we just know.
This morning I woke up at 9:50AM in a silent home hearing only the wind rustling the trees outside my window.
Good morning, Lord.
Tuesday. Laundry day.
The 18th. Dad’s birthday…
I don’t exactly do well to make complete sentences upon waking.
I’ve felt a bit childlike, appropriately so, in my prayerful approach the past few days, asking the Lord to please allow me just a moment of awareness of my dad. Just a reminder that would be so of him and from Him that I wouldn’t mistake it. For whatever reason, my often unsentimental heart needed it more than ever. A whiff of his cigar. A glimpse of a stranger in a crowd that looked like him. Anything, really. It’s been so long, it would carry me for years.
Months ago I decided to choose something each day to celebrate. I usually only put it on parade in my heart and mind. Today! Today I celebrate….
However, I drove this afternoon to a little cupcake bakery, bought a treat and drove home. I pondered how ordinary my day had been so far with decreasing laundry and increasing quantities of sweet memories of my dad.
Although he’s been away from us for 21 years, today would have been his 75th Birthday.
I set the cupcake on the kitchen island and went upstairs to switch, load & fold more laundry. It wasn’t long after that I learned my Aunt Michelle, my dad’s only sister and safe to say one of his best friends, had passed on.
It was as though I could hear my dad say, “For my birthday, I want my sister here with me!”
And I believe he got it.
I smiled and then began sobbing.
Today I celebrate his adventurous spirit (which he did not genetically pass down to me), and his love of food & laughter and friends & family (which he did)… and blew out a candle in honor of what would have been his 75th Birthday.
I was walking through the mall a couple weeks ago past the kiosks where the very nice Israeli men are always wanting to buff your nails for you. Not all of nails… just one.
“Oh, no thank you. I already have 2 of these nail sets at home” I told him.
“Oh! That’s wonderful! … Wait, are those your real nails? Can I see your hand for just a moment?”
Crap.
I may have the nail stuff but I realized real fast he was selling skin care. I had just done my very effective facial the day before, purging my entire face of every possible unwelcome impurity or otherwise, so I was feeling pretty sure I’d be back on my way to shop at Gap within 30 seconds.
Wrongo.
After a salt scrub to show impurities coming off my clean hands and a mask done on the inside of my wrist, he laid out all the products I never wanted and offered me a super special deal because I was a return customer.
I was headed to Gap 10 minutes ago. How am I standing here derailed getting a wrist scrub? One wrist.
“Let me think about it and I’ll be back at the mall tomorrow.” That’s laughable to a salesman.
“Are you a model?” he asked. That is laughable to me. For a split second I debated asking if he had something that could remove the zebra tube dress of stretch marks that exists from 6 inches below my breasts through the 9 inches above my knees, but I decided to hold that one to myself and let him teach me about the Dead Sea for a minute.
I must be fairly friendly because he said, “I know that you will tell me the truth… what is holding you back from buying this today?”
He was right. I speak truth. “I don’t want all these products” I told him. “I will get home and forget how to use them & when.” I explained that I only use vaseline, warm water & a washcloth on my face. That is all i have the mental capacity for in the morning. Or ever. I loved the look on his face when I said that. What does that cost me, like, $10 a year?
He informed me that there was a lightened place on my skin. Really? He picked up a mirror to show me. “oh no…no i dont want to see….” I stepped backwards and shied away. I’m sure the away movement was the total opposite effect of what he intended.
He said that because we were becoming friends by now and wanted to tell me his real name. I’m sure he thought I would appreciate that and it might make it harder for me to say no to his next sales offer. He helped me say his name a few times and get my Rs successfully rolling and I softened up a bit… until he tried to sell me more. I flat out denied any hope for purchase to my new friend and he bent over laughing, put his hands over his face and said “ahhhh! You are a tough cookie!”
I had to be. Little did he know it was payday and my family’s entire cash envelope system of survival for the next 2 weeks was freshly counted & divided in my purse.
It would be kind of hard to explain to the kids that mommy had a lightened place on her face that required special lotions and that if they would just hang in there, my skin would be more even toned and my pores smaller in just three months. Also, our dinner this month will be ramen-noodle-this and ramen-noodle-that.
He wanted to educate me. I get it. His skin, absolutely beautiful. Why wouldn’t I believe a man who carries toner in his backpack so he can use it midday, right?
Then he lowered the boom and told me he those few lights spots on my face inhale pollution.
Excuse me?
IN.HALE.
Pollution into my face?
I blankly stared at him but behind my eyes a reel of images raced. A nuclear smoke stack, Al Gore’s face, my pores opening like funnels and dirt flying into them with vacuum force.
I bought that skin cream so fast your head would spin. Damaged box 75% off what my new friend was initially thinking I was willing to part ways with.
Satisfaction danced over our heads.
“You are gonna be back here in three months hugging me and thanking me!” he said. We’ll see my friend. Don’t count your chickens yet.
Last night I walked into Avery’s room to tuck her into bed and found her propped up against her pillows reading a book…. to Comet. awww…
[gasp] “Mommy! I want to read you this book!” Oh Lord, I thought, I just want to go sit in my chair. Alone. Quiet.
“Okay! I would LOVE that babe!” was the right answer and the one I gave.
And so she began Dr. Seuss’ Hop On Pop Book. She loved reading it and I was completely captivated by her happiness. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped a quick picture. Somehow my phone, dropped no less than 50 times, just doesn’t seem to take pictures as nicely as it used to.
I was walking a fine line…living in and soaking up this very moment with her. And wanting to capture it forever in a share-able format.
“I’ll be right back! I’m gonna go get my good camera!” I promised as I raced downstairs and swapped out the lenses. I ran back up and tried to drop back in to where I was emotionally with her just 90 seconds before.
I haven’t picked up my camera more than, say, five times this summer. It’s usually found as an appendage on me, and yet, this summer has been quiet. Mostly undocumented. Just as children gravitate toward a special blanket or cuddly animal, I think the camera has become my comfort item of choice. One that is easy for me to hide behind and observe from. My position of choice in any environment.
Avery continued reading her book and found it absolutely hilarious. So much so that she threw her body back and put her hand to her head after reading a specific portion. I thought my heart would explode right then. I was beaming watching her happiness and I was actually capturing it in the lens too.
My phone rang as she ended the book. It was Brian, who has been away this week. “What are you up to?” he asked. I walked out of the room.
“Ohhhmygosh” I whispered, “I was in the midst of the sweetest moment with Avery and I ran & got the camera and … I just… I love the picture I got! I captured the moment and…” I started to cry.
I can’t remember feeling simultaneously so excited and so sad. It was a perfect storm of emotion as I told him about the moments just prior, packaged with the reality of my camera left cold on the desk for the past couple months.
“What have I missed?” I asked him.
I suppose what I may have missed through the lens of a camera, I’ve found in experience and conversation and observation. And perhaps I needed that just as much. It’s a risk.
I am, however, freshly reminded today of the power that lies in the simple click of a camera. And even better than that, the reward of not crashing in my chair to have some “me time” a moment too soon.
Perhaps this summer will be remembered by me as the one when I stepped out from behind the camera and learned to live in the moment a little more. To just go and sit and hold my daughters hand instead of take a photo of her there alone. To study her face as she laughs and memorize the sound so that no matter what technology may ever fail me, my memory, I pray, will not.
I’m thankful tonight that I have a summer’s worth of these moments stored up.
And a couple photos too.
I suspect that I am what I recently heard termed as an Avid Indoorsman. I don’t generally ‘do’ outside unless I’m on a blanket with brie & jam. You’re not about to catch me frolicking ankle deep in some stream because I am most certain bacteria will swim up the bed of my toenails and take residency in my bloodstream.
One reason I like to admire trees from afar is that I can not stand the thought of ticks and how sick you can get from them. Although, until last weekend, I had only ever laid eyes on one tick. It was a year ago on Taylor’s neck and it sent me dry heaving into the sink and calling on two friends to help remove it after my attempts to do so left the head and front legs behind. The girls still talk about it. ((shudder))
Last weekend after a fun night playing outdoors, both girls woke up with them. After undergoing a first and then second checking and removing process, I asked Brian to check my head. This took only 1/100th the time it took to check Taylor’s head. My word, that child has a head of hair for three people. Even though I was in the clear, I could not shake the horrible creepy crawly feeling so I headed upstairs for a shower. I was checking myself over in the mirror, yet again, (OCD anyone?) when I saw a black spot on the backside of my outer thigh and called downstairs for Brian. “I need your help. I got a little tick on me.”
“What.” Not a question. A statement. This was serious news.
Upstairs he came armed with supplies: a ziploc, box of matches, paper towel, a lighter, tweezers…the whole nine yards. I bit my lip, worried about what was about to go down and not IF, but how badly it would hurt. The curiosity of it all, being my first tick, was probably comparable to wondering about your first tattoo. Don’t worry mom, it’s just wondering.
It was small. Would that make it faster? It was all the way in my skin too. Was it already a lost cause? I laid on the floor with my leg bent against me to make it steady. I was sure a game of cat & mouse was about to ensue between Brian & this uninvited bug. I occupied my mind by looking the other way and checking facebook and email on my phone, trying to ignore the sound of the match that was just lit and the fact that it was headed toward the surface of my skin.
I could cuss here, but I will refrain at my mother’s request. Let’s just say, my eyes were big and the match was unsuccessful.
Next came my very sharp tweezers being pressed into my leg in an attempt to pop that sucker out.
Nothing.
Brian started looking at it weird and sighing. He grabbed the lighter most often used to light our grill. The flame was open all the way and I dodged my eyes away from what my facebook friends were doing and around to what was about to happen to me. A 3″ flame was headed my way. Visions of very unhappy things raced around my brain, like the pennies circling that cyclone thing at the mall, except they were faster and angrier.
Why would this thing not back it up & out of my skin?
Brian tried a while longer. His head kept turning different ways to get the best light. He was so steady and I, in turn, grateful for how determined he was to get it. I tried not to breathe. I tried to relax. I tried to think happy thoughts of hydrangeas and new shoes and mojitos.
Finally, after the best effort ever given, Brian concluded, “Baby. I don’t think that’s a tick. I think… I think that’s a mole.”
Seriously. The one thing you should never EVER pick at we nearly just lit on FIRE and attempted to pop out from an inch beneath it?
Let’s just say, laying on your back is one of the heartiest ways to laugh out loud. Our lives…One part drama. One part sitcom. I try to keep him on his toes and be sure life with me is a little bit exciting.
We laid in bed Sunday night side by side, staring at the ceiling. Aside from the enflamed spot on my leg, all the drama of the previous day had faded. We talked quietly about the week ahead and what plans and goals each of us had. It got quiet and I thought he was drifting off to sleep.
“Mondays are the hardest days for me.” he said out of no where.
“What? Why?” We turned our heads to face each other.
“Because those are the days I miss you most.”
That makes them my favorite.
I was sitting in a cozy chair this afternoon reading through blog posts in my feed reader when I skimmed the title, “Intimate Modern Museum Wedding”
Sounds like something I would love.
So I opened it and saw a photo that looked very familiar. Of Brian and I.
I looked back up at the title and saw the end of it, “Heather + Brian”.
Well I’ll be. Our vow renewal photos, taken by the gifted Jenny Lindsay along with a few words written by me describing the planning of the party are being featured on Wedding Wire’s blog today.
You can see more of Jenny’s photos of the evening on her blog or in our home. Happy Friday!
A few weeks back after an emotionally off kilter night, I felt a nudge to go upstairs and tuck my oldest daughter Taylor, age nine, into bed. The door was nearly shut and the room dark, as Brian had already spent some time with her, prayed and tucked her in.
I walked across the room and scooped her up in my arms as she lay flat & straight on the bed staring at the ceiling. My face dove into the pillow next to her, our cheeks touching, her arms thrown around my shoulders.
It didn’t take more than 3 seconds for me to realize that my daughters face was wet with hot tears. I lifted my face of the pillow about an inch so my words could escape the space between. “What’s wrong!?” insert 3 second silence – enough for her to weigh her answer and … “Nothing.” she whispered.
I didn’t know exactly what she & Brian had talked about for that half hour before bed but I knew enough. I had passed by earlier and through the crack in the door had seen the compassion on his face as he sat Indian style on the ground with his hands folded under his chin and his heart on his sleeve as she talked.
I felt the burn rise in my face as she kept her feelings from me in that moment. I was okay with it and yet, I wasn’t. Why wouldn’t she tell me too? I welled up with tears and already being face down in the pillow broke down into ugly cry mode. It was quiet between us except that I began to shake ever so slightly, and there I was laying in my daughters arms, crying.
“What’s the matter, mama?” she asked me. She rubbed my back and patted me for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. I’m supposed to be the compassionate comforter here, and here she is, extending that to me. I cried harder knowing nothing was getting past this child.
“I just love you more than anything in this world and it hurts me when you are sad. I would do anything to take it away. But I don’t. know. how.” She squeezed her little arms around me tighter and whispered, “I love you too.”
Taylor has had a difficult year. She has struggled socially more than I ever did from 9 thru 19. Her heart hurts as she craves a friend who doesn’t share her same last name.
As I was out for a drive earlier this year wrestling with my feelings over her situation, the Lord dropped some thoughts into my heart to ponder; that nothing we go through is ever wasted. He will use everything for His glory. Everything. For years Taylor has said that she wants to be a missionary and a nurse, so while this year has felt dark at so many turns, I believe God can and will use it to cultivate a spirit of compassion in her. I’m not sure we can become something if we haven’t had it shown to us or had a real need for it. We are experiential people.
I’ve grown up in church, and never once heard about a heavenly garbage can where our hurts and things that didn’t work out – the scraps of our life – go to pile up. God doesn’t do experiments and just throw His hands up at the end and say, “Oh well.”
Even still, I feel like curling up in a ball and crying out, “Don’t waste it God! It hurts her too much! I beg You to make something really beautiful out of this!” She’s too precious. But He already knows that. All I can do is stand here with my hands open in surrender. I can’t control any of it. She was His before she was mine. I have to trust that He is speaking to her and protecting her in His perfect way. Ways that I, sleeping the next room over, am incapable of.
5-12 Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. Run to God! Run from evil! Your body will glow with health, your very bones will vibrate with life! Honor God with everything you own; give him the first and the best. Your barns will burst, your wine vats will brim over. But don’t, dear friend, resent God’s discipline; don’t sulk under his loving correction. It’s the child he loves that God corrects; a father’s delight is behind all this.
Proverbs 3: 5-12 (The Message)
I do not do ‘goodbye’ well.
And I don’t like ‘see ya later’ much better.
Two weeks ago I turned onto my street and could not help but ONLY see the FOR RENT sign in the yard of the house across the street from us. I was certain that I was seeing things, so I slowed down to study it and utterly confused, I turned quick into my garage, jumped out of my car and clenching my jaw so as not to cry, marched across the street. The clenched jaw thing gave out. Chin quivering ensued.
My neighbor Beth, with her ugly new lawn accessory, saw the whole thing go down from inside her house. She later told me she watched me march over from the window wondering if I was mad or upset or how I would react. Of course, when she saw me crying, there was no denying, I was seriously unhappy.
“I should have told you before the sign went up! It happened too fast!” she told me. Arrgh. Now we were both crying. The tears were rolling off my face so fast I was relying on my forearm to wipe them. “I can’t even hug you because I have PINK EYE and my TEARS are CONTAGIOUS!” Ugh…we talked some more. “I’m going home to cry in private.” And as I turned to go home and do just that, she took the sign out of her yard and put it on the side of the house. Thats some neighborly LOVE right there. She told the other neighbors and then put it back out when everyone was up on the news.
Her husband got a great job. They are moving back into their old house. This is a GOOD thing! And yet, we wish if it were to be, that it were only just across town. But it’s not.
It’s a blessed thing to love your neighbors and live life the way we do. I hear how uncommon it is, but I guess for me, the truth of that fades because for the past two years, it is all that I’ve known. Toys, coffee, wine, leftovers, dogsitting, babysitting, bachelor & -ette viewing, prayers, time, advice, recipes, clothing and kindness. We share, exchange and give it all around here.
Tonight, we hosted a lawn party and neighbors from many surrounding houses gathered to spend time with them. It was pretty great. As the kids played behind us, the adults gathered near the table and we each began to share something special that we love or appreciate about our friends who are moving away tomorrow. I bet we stood there half an hour doing only that.
When different people say things that resonate with each other, you know it’s truth is abundant. This family is well loved. They have been an example to every one of us. We have been challenged to love people well and serve them joyfully and I am nearly positive that every person spoke of their patience as parents. I can only remember Beth being upset once, and even then she busted out laughing! That’s really something significant to have said of you.
Mark has an unbelievable memory and a gift for making conversation. It just seems so easy for him, and he shows such interest in everyone, every time.
Six weeks shy of two years as neighbors; I have only seen Beth hold a phone twice.
You can go ahead and read that again.
No joke. She’s always 100% there.
I wanna be like that. I need more of their example in my life. Although I’m not ready for a moving truck to be parked outside my front window 12 hours from now, I can smile because I know without a doubt that they are following God’s lead. No mistakes in His call.
Brian & I reaffirmed our wedding vows to each other a couple months ago on our anniversary. 12 years on March 12. There are few couples on Brian’s side of the family tree that celebrated that many years together. One, as best he could remember. I say that not as anything negative – I say it to point to what God has done for us and how He is changing our family tree.
We didn’t know that we would arrive at 12. But we did. We did!
We thought we should celebrate in a memorable way, and chose to do so with people, none of whom witnessed our vows the first time around, but who spent time praying over us & walking life out when we were limping along, and who inspire and challenge us in our marriage. Without knowing to what lifelong promises had been made in a church 800 miles down the road, and a decade before some of us would even meet… we invited them to celebrate this marker.
Everytime I thought about our vows or what I would say in preparation, tears would spill over my eyes. I just kept thinking, We didn’t do this. God did this. God did! There was nothing we could do to bring us together like this. There was so much in my heart, and while this had the potential of a beautiful bullet point project, it was hard to condense.
But I finally did. And it may seem overly simple, but I think it pulled together everything I felt in my heart but couldn’t express, and centered it under one big umbrella.
I vowed to Brian that I would do everything I could to make home a place he couldn’t wait to get to at the end of the day. As our daughters stood watching and listening, I promised that I would do the same for them, so his girls would always be coming back home to their daddy.
It’s a wide umbrella. But for me, its pretty centered.
photo courtesy of Jenny Lindsey Photography
Make home, home. It’s has zero to do with decorating and everything to do with how my family feels when I greet them and they walk through our door. How life is lived in passing in the stairwell or sitting around our table.
I debated how to make this happen for our family and for me. This is my first year back to working and I’ve really gotten a crash course on organization and managing our household differently… but last week, my husband welcomed me back home as a ‘full time’ stay at home mom. I thought for sure some new pink ruffled rubber gloves were hiding out somewhere.
I gave working my best shot. What’s that? Yes, I only worked one or two days a week. But my mind doesn’t shut off, and I have to throw boundaries on it before I freeze on everything. I felt embarrassed that, declaring how good God is to know just the perfect job for me, and then … leave it. Who does that? But I felt it impressed on my heart, and then a friend literally spoke these very things back to me in conversation, that the Lord used this past year of me working to do His own work, which was abundantly more than I could ask or think. While I was busy thinking on other things, my heart shifted. My vision changed.
He took my thoughts away from my decorating wants & updates and gave me new responsibilities to focus on.
He renewed my marriage. As in, made it new. Because He’s in that business.
He has refreshed my spirit as a parent. Although, if you heard me “raise my voice” at my kids recently, I know you are questioning this statement. We are in the midst of some interesting days as parents but we are always hopeful & trusting. God is good and gracious and merciful always.
When I look at these few reasons alone, I see no reason to be embarrassed. I see His hand tangibly working in my heart and life and now, my season is set to venture further into what He has set in my heart to do; make home a place they can’t wait to get to.
This is the scariest thing I have ever set out to do.
At the beginning of 2011, as people were making their new years resolutions and goals, there was also talk of having a ‘word’ for the year. I have to laugh, as I hadn’t thought of it until just now as I close this out, but, my word was RISK.
I’m thankful for the transformation I have lived and seen this past year to take the freeze factor out of the next chapter.
My friend Amy emailed me a few weeks ago and said she was waiting on some “Heather perspective” on this here website o’ mine. I honestly forgot I had a blog for some amount of time, although you wouldn’t know it by the 176 drafted blog posts sitting on my server today. That’s a lot of time & effort, parked in no man’s land.
One of my favorites, and one I’ve spent a whole lot of time on, has disappeared. I guess I get a fresh start on it. It’s a story worth telling, beautiful and celebratory in nature.
I love to celebrate.
I have an outline of things to write about. Since its been so long, some are broken down into points so I get them in order and don’t get overwhelmed and just click “move to trash”. Even so, in the back of my head I’m saying Forget about it. Just write. I think Jon Acuff might agree.
So I’m working on forgetting about perfecting every paragraph and just start writing again. Lord knows, I have plenty to talk about.
Embracing the journey, one prayer and cup of coffee at a time.
highly caffeinated 