Tag: family

I just want friends who aren’t cool, like me

“Am I cool, mom?”

I was standing there, looking into the bathroom at my most tender child while he sat on the toilet, and I responded like any mom would– like I thought he would want me to respond.

“Yeah, buddy, you’re one of the coolest people I know!”

Silence. So much toilet paper.

“I don’t think I’m cool. I just want to have friends who aren’t cool, like me. Because I like who I am! And I just want them to like who they are. And I could like who I am.”

“You know what, you’re totally right and that actually makes more sense. I’m not cool either and it feels really good to be around people who just like who we are. Wow, that’s a really wise thing you said.”

Flush. Silence. So much toilet paper.

I love this kid so much it hurts. I’m wild about him. Tonight after family devotions, he preached a sermon in some of the straightest language I’ve ever heard about how the meanness inside of us is violent toward other people. His delivery is at times hard to follow because he weaves in and out of teaching and illustrations (accompanied by an entire scene acted out where he is all the characters). That’s how it was tonight, but every time Pat or I thought to insert a teaching point or help him along, he just kept right on going and by the end of his rambling we were both affirmed with wide eyes, “Wow, that’s really incredible.”

The funny thing is, he’s asked this before about being cool and I always emphasize just how cool he, in fact, truly is. But I know now we weren’t speaking the same language. He said “cool” and I heard “that invisible quality that pushes some people to the fringes and keeps some of them close to the center” and assumes that the center is where we all want to be.

I learned a lesson about language, looking at my boy on the toilet tonight. I need to listen more. Ask more questions. Make less assumptions. And, if I’m looking for it, the lesson might be for my spirit, too.

Posted on by Caroline 1

when our souls can hug

“Ugh! Don’t you think it’s just so frustrating that we can never actually hug?!”

She’s acting out the question like it’s a modern dance prompt. “I mean, we’re just covered in molecules and there’s no real way that you… I mean the real you can really hug the real me! We’ll always just be separated by our skin!”

I’m not sure if I get the sweats because she’s so like me and I can so clearly visualize the mountains she’s climbing in her head OR if I get the sweats because she’s so unlike me which means there is a whole different set of mountains in there. Either way, I get overwhelmed by the barrage of questions and thoughts and the speed which is eerily similar to Rory from that one show I never watched in high school. The whole business of “we’re hugging but we’re not” was too existential for the post bedtime moment when it was introduced, so I shooed her off and snuggled into the end of one of three books on my nightstand.

Tonight, we walked the Beltline in search or Kombucha. Just two nerdy ladies making loud commentary on everything from fall weather to friendships to socially acceptable fraternizing.

“What’s singles night? Who goes to it? If you can get drunk on alcohol why do you drink it?” And she interrupts her own thoughts– “Oh, mom look! That place opened up! We’ve been waiting for it to open and now it is.. oh and looks like kind of a hula theme, okkkk! Oh, there’s the climbing gym. I sure love that place. And also why are there so many memberships but they are so expensive? You know, in heaven that will be so cool…

“Oh, you mean we will have all the memberships?”

“There won’t be any because we will all be in the same club!” I smile and she reaches for my hand. Now, we’re back to fall weather and sweaters and, oh! Here we are again. Back at molecules hugging.

“But, mom it really is awful that I’ll never actually be able to hug you. Like, really hug you, because we are just covered in skin and molecules and… ugh!”

“Wait, so you want our bones to hug? Our blood? What is it you envision hugging that would be more me than with my skin on?”

I was pushing, prodding… not because I knew what she would say and definitely not because I knew the answer (who even does know if molecules hug?). Today, she learned about dust mites (thank you Science class for introducing us to a world of terrors we cannot see) and she’s convinced we are all being “hugged” by tiny, terrible insects most of the time. Gross. But no, I think I was pushing because I was genuinely curious about where her thoughts would land.

“No, not blood and bones! I don’t know… Maybe, I don’t know, maybe I wish our souls could hug! Is that it? Like I just really think there is so much in between us kind of.”

“That’s it!” I said maybe a little too loud but it was okay because the DJ at the singles night was bumping. “I think I get what you’re saying!” And all at once we both summited a mountain in cozy sweaters in our separate brains and I realized God is seeing me, loving me, tending me, through the mind of this exquisite young lady. And I can see her a little bit more clearly in all her bursting, 9-year-old glory.

Indeed, what a wonderful day it will be, Zella Ruth, when our souls can finally hug.

Posted on by Caroline 0

signs of life

Sun is speckling, slanting across the kitchen counter, then the dining table, the dresser in the bedroom and now the smudged glass of the hutch. A clock counting the daylight hours, I count too. My eyes follow the golden spotlights and the shadows.

“Christ is Light!” The second littlest proclaims after dinner. “In Him there is no darkness,” we respond. What a ride candles are with little kids. On Sunday’s advent dinner, a mess of fingers rushed for the lighter, the precarious (yet very cool, vintage) five candle holder dipped and dived as a separate mess of fingers held it “steady” for lighting. Life.

Outside, the rain and clouds made it feel like night around 4 pm, winter cold hanging in the damp dark. Inside, the oven was still warm and I opened the kitchen window to invite a breeze between our bodies. We were many, filling out every room and spilling potluck dishes on every counter. Abundance. Inside the dark day, inside the dark season, inside the dark world– we are bright defiance. Pièces de résistance.

Our neighbors shared a tip a few years ago after we gave them a young crepe myrtle from the abundance we dug up from an acreage “thinning their plants for maintenance reasons.” (Praise be!) When we apologized to our neighbors because we thought maybe the tree we gave them didn’t survive the uproot and replant process, they said, “Oh, actually… it looks dead, but if you just scrape the bark you can see it is green underneath. Ours is alive, so we think it’ll have leaves in the spring!” Praise. We ran to see if ours survived, too.

Our front lawn is a sad mess of wet, brown pecan leaves. We are now choosing to compost our leaves by doing absolutely nothing about their gathering every fall, but it does not look good or tidy or festive. We shoved our shoes in their cubbies and under dressers so that there was space on the mat for the friends who would come for advent dinner Sunday. We knelt to pray at 5:45 pm as a family that God would help us be good hosts, even if it was a small group. That little rubber mat didn’t stand a chance. The shoes piled as the plates filled and I had to walk sideways in order to make the circle from dining to living room and back again. Warmth stretched out from my middle, as Pat prayed for the provisions and kids crawled out from under tables.

We ate well and drank deep in that special, winter potluck way and then huddled together to mark another week of advent– to name the shadows where light appears to have faded almost completely in this present darkness. We prayed peace into wars and sibling fights and meanness and anger. We prayed peace where it is impossible. We prayed for miracles.

“All is not lost. Mm-mm.”

My body sags with the desperation of it, now Tuesday and sunlit. But it is still advent dark. Our prayers for peace inside wars and fights and meanness and anger, well… It is still advent dark. So, I hear this song on repeat and remember that planting seeds of peace is obedience.

We prayed the Collect to finish out our time on Sunday. I’m still learning these rhythms.

BLESSED Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The time for teaching moments had passed. The kids attached well to the illustration from Isaiah 11 that Jesse proclaimed over the group, “The lion shall lie down with the lamb… the wolf and the goat… the baby and the cobra…” These are not relationships of peace in the kingdom of the world. This vision is the hope of a peace that Christ accomplished being fully realized on this earth– every inch of it. Their right answers earned them a Ukrainian chocolate that some of our guests brought to share from their home country. God be praised, but those kids weren’t hearing more lesson. So, we simply spoke the collect together. We let the words rise in a chorus above our heads, an unlikely choir of ages and stages and backgrounds. And, we may not have known it, but we were praying for the seed to be planted in us. We prayed that the Word would actually take root in us, so that we ourselves could be the very planting of the peace that Christ accomplished.

May these seeds defy the flippant scattering and the death underground and the complicated germination and the unlikely conditions and the hungry squirrels– may these seeds of peace sown in obedience bring about an otherworldly rest for the weary, the war-torn, the wintered and the waiting.

Advent is still so dark. When there is no sign of life, may Christ light the way to plant the seeds of peace. AMEN.

Posted on by Caroline 3

no better place

There is no place like home, it’s true. There is a familiar comfort in a cozy corner or books arranged systematically in a way no other human soul could understand or the steam rising from a freshly baked loaf cooling on the counter. But sometimes home isn’t home enough. It’s unexplainably lonely and cold and quiet, even as the joyful shouts of children smother your thoughts and you shuffle around with three layers of your husband’s socks. Just me?

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

Psalm 84:1-4

This morning, after a mess and tangle of extra limbs in my bed and water requests before I opened my eyes, I remembered my home. I put the water on to boil, measured the coffee extra strong, and gave my littlest ones cereal in bowls with milk that I mentally prepared to clean up off the floor because they wanted to share a chair. Muscle memory pre-heated the oven to 460, because I have a hunch my oven runs cold. I formed the dough while the hot water rested, then rested the dough while I ground the coffee.

And, I thought of home. It’s a refuge I know well, but a place I have never lived. It’s the home God made for me and where my heart rests its head sometimes without my body fully participating. And it feels so desperately far from where I am. I sang the words with my winter-cold voice and it cracked extra as I achieved a level above the din of hide-and-seek madness circling three rooms.

I wanna be in Your presence, I wanna be near Your heart
I wanna know You’re close even when I’m feeling far
I don’t want what this world would offer, I want the living God
‘Cause there’s no place better than where You are

from Caroline Cobb’s “No Better Place”

I poured fluid ounces of meticulously heated water over coffee grounds and I cried. “Do I?” The thought surprised me, like reaching deep back into the freezer for a chocolate long hidden only to turn around to meet a child’s curious gaze. Shame and love warred for a moment– and I paused, wondering what my exposure would produce in me. I sang again, believing that singing my love for home would remind my heart where I belonged.

As I prepare for advent this year, I’m listening. I’m listening to Howard Thurman and Tish Harrison Warren and Fleming Rutledge. I am listening to old saints and seekers, monks and martyrs. And I am yearning with them for home. I am believing with them that Light has come, will come and is a Light that cannot be overcome. This is the Light that illuminates my true home. My yearning for this home feels fragile– wrapped as it is in my human understanding.

As I listen to others, I also hear my own condemnation. No matter how much I know, how many times the Spirit convicts, how often I face the facts of spiritual failure in my own life, I cannot accomplish my own mending. The ripped garments of my choosing can only be repaired with the torn veil of the Temple and the broken flesh of a Savior. And, those tiny words formed in a question hidden in the noisy kitchen chaos this morning, beckoned me, “come.”

Come, child. Come sit inside my mending. Come repent and rest. Come without all your defenses and reasons. Just come be in this Light and know that the exposure allows you to see, actually see the home I’ve made for you. Be here. Be with me. Sit with me. Listen to me. Come, child. Listen to the stories I tell of a world I made right, a world I am setting to right, a world I am actively mending by the blood of my Son, Jesus.

Warren writes about the prophet Isaiah pairing repentance and rest (Isaiah 30:15) and how it might seem curious at first. We might assume that turning from sin is work. It makes sense, because resisting temptation is work. But, in our turning we are also accepting the joy of the true work accomplished. In Christ, our repentance is not work but freedom. In Christ, we walk through an open door to be both fully exposed and fully at rest. Home. Not a home with dusty corners or shadows or shame. The home we have in Christ is rest and my body relaxes into a deep and yearning sadness to be fully arrived mind, body and soul. There is no better place.

Now, I return to the hide-and-seek madness as we prepare for Sabbath. A little one will sit on my hip as I vacuum and another will keep me company on the kitchen floor while I clean and bake. I will tend the sick one with sips of Sprite and listen as another regales me with tales of the worlds inside her books. I will share elbow space with my partner as we set to the tasks of the day. And I pray all day I will hear the refrain, “there is no better place” and think of the invitation into the Lord’s presence somehow, mysteriously, in the midst of it all.

Posted on by Caroline 2

the habit of meeting together

It started raining at 4 pm, the kind that comes sideways slowly like a mist you can ignore but then somehow soaks your jacket and requires windshield wipers. We were expecting company within the hour. I never check the weather. I even told folks earlier in the week– I won’t check the weather, we’ll just pray. Our house is small, sometimes shrinking with our own dinner shenanigans, six pairs of hands and shoulders jostling for storytelling position that often ends in a pair of feet standing on a chair.

We love our little house. It is warm and safe and insulated from the harshness on the other side of the world. As we prepared our table in the rain, with borrowed decorations and mismatched chairs in candlelight, I thought of the horror lighting up backyards and neighborhoods in Gaza.

French loaves and round loaves baked while the ingredients for squash soup simmered and adjusted to my seasoning whims. I threw ice cubes in the oven, my made-up hack for a water bath, and prayed my haphazard disregard for timing and instructions would still produce something edible. I tripped over the 1 year old and had words with the 8 year old who insisted every art supply was needed for the gifts she was preparing for our guests. The 6 and almost 4 year old were, as per uzh, completely oblivious to the fact of hosting at all. Although, they managed to pop up every 17 minutes to ask, “When is the party starting again?”

The habit of hosting is spiritual warfare. It is perceiving books pushed off the shelves in the movie Interstellar to reveal an entirely different dimension, a time and space of different rules and a kingdom where the right rule is perfectly reflected. Heaven. The picture of God as Host is perhaps my most intimate understanding of my Maker. It’s about the inviting, the preparing, the knowing, the making space… and all of it for the purpose of existing in the same room, in the same moment. That is the reward. That is the joy of the Maker, the delight of the Father. To be with me. To be with us.

Sometimes, in my immaturity, I wonder if I host to better know this truth– to heal the unbelief that He hasn’t actually invited me or won’t actually follow through with the plans for the feast in the land of Zion. There’s always a moment, pre-party, where I wish we get rained out– or that some external factor would relieve the stress and failure of the hosting mayhem. But, then the mist clears, the crowd comes, and the imperfect party feels like the kingdom of heaven. Surprise guests arrive. Kids spill the “kid wine” and refuse indulgent mashed potatoes. The candles are perfect for 15 minutes at dusk and then nearly light hairs on fire before burning down past the candle holder and providing less than ideal light. The night hides the outdoor tables and crunchy pecan leaves land in the potato salad. And it feels like the kingdom.

The habit of hosting is spiritual warfare, but what a miracle of a reality that, if we invite Him, the King of heaven and earth and all creation shows up in all His glory to proclaim the battle is won. Hosting is acting out the belief that the King of heaven has held nothing back in His invitation and as we reflect that likeness, neither should we. It is a battle cry that doesn’t reverberate or echo in the hollow chambers of the interwebs but comes alive inside the hearts of those present.

It got loud, there were tumbles and offenses and hurt feelings and demands for more pumpkin mousse. But, in the middle of it, we made sure to name where we were directing our thanks. We prayed a prayer as we broke the bread that the delight in our tasting of it would pale in comparison to our delight in the sharing of the Bread of Life. We prayed again as we built little ebenezers as a family to remember the way the Lord had been faithful in the past year. The Lord be praised, for He has shown up!

The habit of meeting together is a spiritual act of resistance! We proclaim the Lord’s name as we crucify our desire for perfect behaviors and pinterest tablescapes. We proclaim the Lord’s name as we lift up the sounds of a rowdy game of tag or a very involved play daycare situation that has developed on the deck. We proclaim the Lord’s name as we invite in new friends and friends of those friends. The Lord, the Lion and the lamb, is on the move. There is something about gathering together that reminds us that this spiritual battle is not a local one. The habit of meeting together is also the habit of mobilizing, training, and joining the global resistance led by the servant king of heaven. The boot camp is the kitchen and the art studio and the garden and the tool shed and the writing workshop.

Our habit of meeting in the glow of our little house is a direct response to the horrors happening in the dark world because the kingdom of God is not a local kingdom– not a national kingdom, not a government or a movement. The kingdom of God is a reality that we embrace as we meet together, imperfectly and wherever we are in the world, and desperately seek His face.

Come, Lord Jesus! Heal my unbelief that I’m not invited to your table even as I invite others to ours.

Posted on by Caroline 2

how to win while losing at motherhood

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14

She clung to my shoulders with her arms and knees, her neck wrapped on mine as the fountain misted our backs and absorbed our squeals. As soon as the wind changed, she anticipated the next mist and around the Bailey Fountain we went – a blurred, bouncing spectacle for the tourists posing in front of the mysterious, mythological scene. The sun beat down just as the mist dewed our faces and there are no photos of our delight. It lived so perfectly in that moment, just after 12 noon on a Tuesday.

Her little, tumbling giggle surprised us both. It was almost too generous – too full and wild. And, if I was guessing, I would say this is a little bit why little children can come to Jesus. 

This full and wild generosity of a child is unrestrained – like their Maker, ready to unleash lavish goodness in response to beauty and in the middle of delight.

There are many ways an adult can ‘become like a child’ and none of them are so easy. I have moments, like the fountain, where delight washes over and nothing ‘adult’ matters. But, most moments, I am aware of my unfortunate maturity. I squirm in skin that has worked hard to shake free of dependence – to get established and known and significant. But, the world is stingy with delight, starved of any true kind. All my slow (and unsteady) progress toward adulthood often feels like chasing after the wind. Meaningless. Culture doesn’t help me get past this curse – I’m constantly reminded that my life is supposed to be linear, that my work is supposed to build and progress and flourish into an evolving and important identity.

There is another baby bulging out of my belly, did I mention that? That’s very adult. The second time around is different for all the obvious reasons, but also because I am not in my first months of marriage and my brother did not just die. But my favorite part has been watching Zella’s sweet affection grow with the size of my belly. She leans in to sing her own made up songs. She tells the baby about all the excitement of this world (mostly noting the baby will get to drink milk). She perceives when the baby is awake and asleep. I’m glad she is paying attention; her wonder pulls me in.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;

I think about that stanza often. It plays in my head without invitation and all my neurons rush to find its melody. Maybe the elusive “winning” is the undercurrent of my everyday, the obvious wanting in every disrupted simple task. The edge of the full dustpan tips on the trashcan and empties on the floor. Not winning. The internet refreshes on days of blog rambles and doesn’t save a word. Not winning. The laundromat increases their prices 8 quarters more than all your cash and the nearest free ATM is 10 blocks away and your potty-trained lady just made a puddle by washer number 4. Not winning.

But God undoes win-lose scenarios – actually disappears them, and not because my daily losses are unimportant or irrelevant. But because he cares so intimately about the sweeping and the creating and the laundry, that He redeems and redefines winning completely. His measurement is an altogether different scale, interstellar dimension status. If not, the “right man on our side” would have been one big loser.

Were not the right man on our side,
a man of God’s own choosing

I get now why He let the little children come. They aren’t so wrapped up and weighted down with losses. Or, at least they aren’t keeping such close track. Or, they get His measurement system – where delight can disrupt the scales in the middle of a series of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad moments. If I’m honest, I need a million of those blurred, bouncing moments – chasing fountain mist with a giggling toddler. I need almost constant reminders of the different win-lose dimension scale.

In a recent talk (which, BTW is winning), Jen Wilkin said, “Human love is based on need. God’s love is not. His covenant stands because it is in no way dependent on me.”

Because God is altogether different, in being and knowing and doing, He is hope against wind chasing. Even as we become like little children – embracing their delight and dependence – we must be supremely aware of His absolute goodness and absolute other-ness. He is true and present in a windstorm and on a still day. In our struggle against a world of devils, it is His truth that triumphs through us – not because of all of our wind chasing, but because He is good. That is why He can be so generous, why His generosity never changes with temperaments or time.

His absolute goodness is in Him like our infinite humanity is in us.

Posted on by Caroline 0

invitations are about movement

I was on the couch, curled up in Sabbath bliss and rubbing the watermelon belly that has become a part of me. We saw the due date come and go last week and a little bit of me thought, “Well, I guess I’ll just be pregnant forever.”

Irrational, maybe. But these are things you think when 43 days have gone by and the wiggles are still on the inside. Things I think, anyway.

Patrick came over and snuggled in to ask, “What can I do to encourage you?”

And then he started reciting Scripture in my silence, while my cheeks burned hot tears.

Philippians 4:4-8
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Psalm 34
“I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad.
Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

He kept reciting the verses from the list my mom sent us in an email a couple weeks back. I asked her to send me verses for laboring to calm my delivery nerves, but he memorized them because he knows it’s good to have Scripture saved up in your soul.

I kept silent, blinking and battling and defending my stubbornness.

The hot tears came because, sure, all the baby emotions. But the Word of the Lord never returns void and the chord it hit yesterday in my spirit was one I’ve been trying to avoid.

I want Baby K to come now because my calendar says Michication (our annual family gathering in Michigan) starts with a flight on July 10th. I want to go to the beach with my niece and nephews and I want to come back with sand in my shoes. I want to sit around campfires and toast marshmallows and play board games late into the night. I want to do all the things we have been talking about since we last left each other in September after James and Carly’s wedding.

That’s what I want.  And just above the din of my own heart and schedule I could still hear him reciting –

Psalm 46:1-3
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”

God surely knows my need for fresh water and sibling laughter and firelight. He surely knows these are good things – things that soothe my heart and calm my spirit. He surely knows I need it just this way.

And still more verses cut through my innermost arguments –

Psalm 143:8
Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

A couple weeks ago, we sang a familiar song after communion at church – it’s a song I have posted before and will probably post again. The song is a simple invitation to sit at a feast, but what I hear these days when I sing is an invitation to movement.

Come, Sinners Come
Come sinners, come for there is a spread
a table full and free
For all who thirst, for Christ has said
that all may come and eat

Come sinners, come
Come sinners, come
Oh, what a love is this
that bids sinners come.

All the way to a dinner party has felt too long to travel these past 10 months – from grief and worry and selfishness and fear. I know that celebration and belonging and courage and joy are just past that threshold, but sometimes I’m still holding the invitation on my doorstep – feeling the beauty and weight of the faith that hangs in the distance between.

I want to sit at the celebration, but I just don’t know if there are enough steps in my feet. And I guess that’s why I am realizing the invitation to “come” is all about movement. The “coming” might take awhile, but repenting is about direction as much as it is about destination.

Stubbornness and pride and fear and worry and anxiety will probably make part of the journey with me, but I guess you could say I’m slowly turning toward the Host.

Pat keeps on saying this whole pregnancy and delivery is a way the Lord is teaching us, speaking to us, and challenging us toward greater faith. I keep nodding that he is right while my feet are planted like cement on my doorstep, inwardly promising to move when I have less to give up.

It doesn’t work like that.

God’s invitation for sinners like me to “come” to the feast is not the reception after the main event I have planned. It is the main event. Movement toward that feast is a movement away from all the things I want instead – beach vacations and 7 pound babies and easy delivery. Every step believes that what is promised is the best there is, the absolute best.

There will probably be more Scripture quoted to a stubborn face hot with tears before Baby K arrives, but I’m praying that Truth will soften me to repentance and movement toward the absolute best.

Posted on by Caroline 3

she is not ours

I know I have not nested enough or planned enough or read enough or enoughed enough – with this whole parenting thing, I mean. I know this because it seems like all pregnant ladies have lists – to do, to buy, to think, to read, to reflect, to pray.

There are also the “don’t worry if you haven’t made a list – this is the one list you’ll need” lists.

I’m not as organized as I used to be (or maybe I am just more honest). I have no lists. [Actually, that’s not true – I am keeping a list of songs that pop into my head unannounced. So far I have: 21 Questions by 50 Cent, Away in a Manger, Video by India Arie, The Storm is Passing Over, We Like to Party, Easter Song by Keith Green, I’m Coming Out by Diana Ross. And those are just the songs that come when I’m near the pen and paper at work where I keep track.] 

I do daydream about baby’s hair color and baby’s imagination and what kind of family we will be when baby turns five.
I do have doubts about being a mom, though with every day my body confirms that I am created for it.
I do imagine what Brooklyn will look like from new eyes as a stay-at-home mom.
I do wonder about the privilege of welcoming a baby with special needs – if that is one of the surprises waiting on delivery day.

A few days ago I gave a strange, bullet pointed version of “my story” for our Brooklyn Fellows class. In the process of preparing, I remembered some precious words my mom said once on a terraza in Santa Lucia, Honduras. My parents were visiting from the States for a week and I had taken them to all my favorite spots – the garbage dump school, the feeding center, the orphanage, and the home for boys – before bringing them to my student’s home for a late lunch (except that, in typical ambiguous fashion, Alejandra and I had never communicated or confirmed this plan… so my dad ended up eating a LOT of pastel (cake) and coffee in the absence of meat).

When my dad was on his third slice and my mom had shared all of our galavanting stories, Alejandra’s mom asked, “Don’t you worry about Caroline being here?”

She answered it just like she would her age or her affinity for the country life, “Well, she’s not ours. She is the Lord’s.” So simply, so true.

I nodded with all my silly, missional enthusiasm. I had done a lot of things in that wonderful country – hitchhiked in El Salvador and La Tigra, been stranded overnight hiking a mountain, driven students through El Centro at night, been pulled over by fake cops, taken students with bodyguards on mission trips, rode in the back of pickup trucks, wandered up to houses that looked like mechanic shops, accepted invitations from neighbor-strangers, stayed up all night with students baking pumpkin muffins and making sushi at 2 am, argued with cops who pulled me over and wanted to take my car… the list is too long and too embarrassing to recount. Not all of it was wise or prayerful or good.

My parents prayed a lot. And they never told me to slow down or to move back home.

“She is the Lord’s.”

I don’t know yet the kind of courage it takes to believe that as a parent. I think it’s the way she said it – like I am first God’s family and I am on loan. It was a fact like the price of corn, but it came out like she was announcing I had royal relatives. It rippled across every belief in my heart that God is sovereign and a kind of kinship welled up as if to say, “I am the Lord’s!”

All of the Scripture I read as a child was not mumbo-jumbo. All those verses and sermons and conversations in the kitchen before dinner and talks before morning milking chores – those were about my Father. I belong to Him.

And He is a good keeper, the best.

I have thought about my mom’s words often, especially this past year when we have held so tightly to Will with possessive pronouns: my son, my brother, my husband, my friend, mine.

And even as we push against it, God is saying, “He is mine. He belongs to me. I am his keeper. And I do not fail.”

That’s hard to hear.

It was a strange time to get pregnant – in the first few months of marriage and in the first few months of grief. But God never stopped being faithful, never stopped keeping promises, never stopped claiming us as His. So, now I pray that when people ask, “Aren’t you afraid your baby will…” we will respond, “Oh, Baby K is not ours. Baby K is the Lord’s.”

It sounds crazy, but I can still hear it spoken over me, like last year’s corn prices and the announcement of royal heritage.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thank you for not claiming me as your own – for doing the harder thing in confessing that I am the Lord’s.

Posted on by Caroline 14

Love, Gram

I am sad you don’t get emails from my Gram.

I read this one over and over, and then several times out loud to different audiences because it is that good. I wish she would start a blog, so everyone could read about the musicians removing their caps because of unpredictable weather at a church service and because they were facing the east. I didn’t make any changes because I want you to read it exactly like I did (the first, second, and fifth times).

Caroline and Patrick, do we have a new address?  Since I don’t do a lot on Facebook of a personal nature, I would like to have an address! ! ! ! ! ! ! !   We had church in the park yesterday.  When they moved the music equipment to the stage the sun was shining and when we got there at 10; it was still shining, but when the service started at 10:15, the clouds had appeared and the musicians removed their caps as they were facing the east.  Service, grill meat, sit down to meat and salad and dessert lunch.  As we finished and were visiting, it began to sprinkle, the music equipment and table and chairs got moved back to the church very rapidly before it began to sprinkle in earnest.  Here in Griswold Iowa, we have had rain EVERY SINGLE DAY.  At least 6 inches for the week.  Good for some thingss, like the corn and beans, but hard on my dahlia flowers.  The Raspberries are BIG at the beginning of their fall season.    And we will have apples.  But the squirrels like the delicious ones, they nibble and they then fall to the ground and that’s it. Sounds like your apartment is just right according to what I heard from someone.  The right size for pancake mondays, right distance from the train, close to old pancake friends, etc. etc.  Got any pictures?  Patrick, one night the girls were fixing  supper while Cindy was on skype and they burned the bacon!  She couldn’t believe it and they were standing right there!  ! ! ! ! !    Love, Gram

You are welcome.

Posted on by Caroline 0

He will not stay hidden

I press my cheeks into the clouds covering the Nebraska sky, “Come out, come out wherever You are! You promised You could be found!”

He promised.

I keep coming back to Jeremiah 29. I memorized verse 11 in elementary and then rolled my eyes at the way it was thrown on calendars and desk organizers for high school graduation gifts, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Plans for prospering and for hope and a future. Plans the Lord declares over us, even as He knows the number of our days. Plans and true words and nothing to roll my eyes about.

The next verses seem to me an encouragement toward belief when those plans don’t make sense, “You will seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord.”

That means sometimes He will be hidden. And sometimes He will even be so hidden that we will only find Him if we seek Him with all our hearts, like finding Him is the most important thing.

And now I’m on my way to California, with my grief cheeks in the middle of Midwest clouds. And I need for that promise to be true. I need for Him to not stay hidden. I need for Him to be found and for me to be found in Him.

This is the flip side of “dying is gain,” I guess. It’s the “to live is Christ” part that is so hard to swallow. Heaven I can handle. I can look forward to eternity with the One who would stop at nothing to have me in His presence forever. I can picture days emptied of pain and full to overflowing with the Creator of everything good. Heaven I can handle. But I am not in heaven, I am here.

And God said there is abundant life, here.

When Jesus came to bring life and life abundant (John 10:10), it was with all the authority of heaven and it was not a hidden operation. Everyone who sought Him out was found by Him; everyone seeking abundance found more than they could carry.

Believing God made abundance available in these moments is the hardest game of hide and seek. But I have noticed that we are all seeking. We are all turning over rocks and looking in closets. We are looking for answers and knowing no answer will make sense.

So, I pray I would seek the right thing. I pray for belief that joy is here, that abundance is here, that life is here… because God has promised to not stay hidden from those who seek Him with all their hearts.

And He has promised to be the strength for me to seek when “all my heart” is a scattered mess that can’t be made to wholly seek anything.

I wrote this on the plane to California yesterday. Less than 24 hours later and these thoughts feel so far away. But they are thoughts and I am typing them down because they are my grief notes and it might be helping. Find all our grief notes at this link and join with us as we mourn in hope.

Posted on by Caroline 2