Happy Birthday Mary Beth!

There are moments I remember as clearly as if they were yesterday. I remember Dr. John, doppler in hand, grinning as if he were going to burst. "You've got a butterfly this time, young lady. No doubt about it; it's a little girl." And I remember going home with that sonogram picture and waiting endlessly for Daddy to come home so I could show him. He looked and he looked, while your brothers waited expectantly. 

"It's a friend for Mommy." His words caught me by surprise. Of course that baby wasn't a friend; it was my daughter. My first daughter. For a long time, my only daughter. In our house, we were parents and they were children. I didn't really think of it as "friends." But my oldest was only 7. And he was a boy.

Daddy's words--as they almost always are--were prophetic. You are, most definitely, my friend. Certainly, I'm the mom and you're the girlie. But you are also the dearest friend I have.

Quiet and shy; thoughtful and introspective, you are not a chatterbox, much unlike your sisters. Ever since your first word, they have come quietly and measured. My heart leapt at those first words. I couldn't wait to hear what was on your mind. And my heart still skips a beat now when you invite me into your thoughts.

You are goodness and you are joy. Sweet girl in the middle of five brothers, you are the whole world to your little sisters. It is my dearest hope that they grow up to follow in your very graceful, very grace-filled footsteps. 

And you are the finest friend a girl could ever hope to have. You give your whole heart and you are ever faithful, even when the going is as hard as it gets. 

Daddy said I'd have a friend. With every year, you grow lovelier. With every year you become more and more the finest friend a mother could ever hope to love. 

Happy birthday, my dear child. I hope this year returns to you all the beauty you bring to us.

{top photo credit: Lori Fowlkes. All the rest are snagged from Mary Beth's facebook page.}

Intentional Weekend: Autumn Reading

The air grows colder. The breeze picks up. The season is changing, becoming autumn, with no chance that summer will make a brief return this time. I've seen the seasons change so many times it would be easy to take it for granted, to barely nod to the shifting winds, save to switch capris for flannel-lined jeans. 

But I have children in my life. Boys who are eager to wear the long-sleeved Under Armour and half pants in the goal. Teenagers who sing the praises of Pumpkin Spice Lattes. And little girls who talk excitedly of Christmas coming tomorrow. They tell me to stop and savor the wonder with them. I am grateful, ever so grateful, to watch with them as He ushers in a new season, to notice the gifts of each turning of the calendar page, to revel in the joy of God's abundant bounty.

Weekends are for bar cookies, oozing with goodness. For sipping hot cider in front of the first fire of the season. For gathering the autumn favorites from the picture book shelf and snuggling together beneath the now-necessary quilt.

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic

Snowsong Whistling

In November

Christopher's Harvest Time

Apple Cake

Crawdad Creek

Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove

Mother Earth and Her Children

Pumpkin Moonshine

Thinking Big Thoughts with Young People

I started a post yesterday morning. I wrote rapidly and with passion, all about text messages and mean girls and life and death and the drama we create versus the reality God intends for us to live. After days of sitting with Rachael, waiting while her father was dying, Mary Beth was at home at our dining room table, trying to wrap her brain around a math lesson. Her cell phone, her iPod, and her computer were fully awake beside her. Normally, we don't allow electronics during school hours, except for academic uses. But Rachael had been texting pretty much all of the previous 24 hours and I was keeping a careful watch as girls rallied around her, some of them in person, some from miles away via social media. Suddenly, there was silence. In the silence of those morning hours, we all knew that Rachael's dad was drawing his last breath.

I tried to upload my post to Typepad. Typepad would have none of it. It disappeared into cyberspace. I quickly figured that was probably for the best and moved on to the next thing. I gathered my little girls on the couch and read Little Red Riding Hood. Just as the woodsman released the grandmother and little girl from their canine tomb, Mary Beth came toward me, laptop in hand. Rachael's brother had updated his Facebook status with a tribute to his father. There was his birthdate and his death date.

In a few moments, Mary Beth was at Rachael's house.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. I had seen the very best of social media and electronic communication. And then I saw human touch, unafraid, in hard places, loving with wholehearted generosity. I couldn't be prouder of my daughter and the girls with whom she dances. They were courageous examples of grace and compassion and their witness humbles me.

At home, while Mary Beth stayed with Rachael, we found ourselves on a bit of a rabbit trail. This post had us researching child slavery in Africa. Nicky, already raw from the past few days of watching and waiting with Rachael, was pushed to brink of emotional meltdown. This was just too much! Too much suffering. 

And yet. And yet he woke this morning wanting to know more about poverty in Africa. More about what Jesus calls us to do. More about the children. So, I showed him this article, about living for Jesus among the poor, about being young and acting with wisdom and grace and compassion and wholehearted generosity. And that, of course, led to Kisses from Katie (do watch the video on the Amazon page). 

Nicholas read the free Kindle sample to me this morning while I knit my Katie's sweater. (Yay! we made it to the sleeves!). Then, we downloaded the rest to read to each other a bit at a time. (I add a caveat here: I don't know if this book is inappropriate for children. I've sent a quick note to a friend who read an advance copy and I'm not going any further with Nicholas until I hear from her. I'll update here if there is inappropriate content.)

{the expression on his face as he reads about a sick, dirty, starving little girl the same age as his littlest sister...}

So that's about it here today. It's raining. Everyone who can read is off in a corner somewhere reading. Karoline and Sarah have overtaken the sunroom and turned it into a pancake restaurant of some sort. I'm getting ready to go get Rachael so she can hang out here for awhile before dance. 

And we're thinking. About big things. About suffering and loss and God's generous grace. About what it is to truly be Christ to one another.

{For more knitting and reading, visit Ginny today.}

Intentional Weekend: Healing

I had planned to go to Pennsylvania this weekend. Three of the boys have soccer games there. We were going to make a family trip of it. But something tugged at me. At the last minute, Mike and I decided I'd stay home with the girls.

We talked as he packed. "I feel like the world has kicked me around in the last month," I remarked to him. "It has," he said, his eyes meeting mine, "and that makes me so sad."

It wasn't just me though; it was my girls. In a very short period of time, those tender-hearted girls have seen more illness and death and disappointment and loss than a strong, healthy adult could bear. The world was kicking them around, too.

I resolved to take this weekend and teach them, show them, how a woman of faith responds to grief, how to heal with grace. I would walk through this with them. Together, we'd heal.

It helps to have a place, a place where we go when our hearts are singing with joy, a place where we go to share with friends, a place where we go when the world knocks us around and we need to heal. Our place is a woodland place. It changes with the seasons. It gets battered by the world sometimes and creaks and is brown and gray. It changes with time, usually slowly, but sometimes drastically. Still, it is familiar, and beautiful, and we are well accustomed to seeing God present there. 

Some families have a beach, a place to gather there to celebrate glorious moments, to share with friends, to make a trip and turn a bad day around. We have a creek (or is it a river?), big old trees, and springtime's most generous flower show. We have rocks to skip across the water and skies so blue they beg to be painted.

This was a place to sit on a blanket and just wait until she talked. Just listen as it all came bubbling out. When it hurts so much and the world feels like it's crushing, come away, girlfriends, to a place where you can clear your head and open your heart, a place where He beats down on you like warm sunshine and you feel grace poured into your soul.

We talked about death, about loss, about hard knocks, about that amazing tree, clearly perched precipitously, commanding our attention in its infirmity. Would it be here next time? Or would it be the newest "bridge tree," stretched across the river, changing currents, inviting children to scamper across its back? 

Nothing stays the same.

 Babies grow into "little big girls." And little girls face big girl hurts.

 Big girls?  Well, sometimes in the life a girl on the brink of womanhood the universe offers an entire curriculum on loss all at once. And it hurts so much that every woman close enough to know can scarcely breathe in the watching.

Take a deep, breath , my girls, after you've had your big cry. Look around. See? He's here. He has a plan for your life. A good plan. And this --all of this-- is part of the plan. Be watchful with Him. Be watchful for Him. Even now, He sends tender mercies, sweet moments of joy. Moments, that wouldn't have been possible without the pain.

We took our fill of fresh air and sunshine. We stayed long and came home late. We feasted on good food and then we discovered a belated birthday present in the mail. 

Fabric!

So, we did something else that girls do when their hearts hurt and the universe has kicked them around. 

We created something beautiful for someone we love.

{{Psst, to my Girlies: I had the best day with you today.}}

Embracing Autumn

I didn't want to embrace autumn this year; didn't want let go of summertime. June and July were perfectly lovely. Just about the loveliest summer I can remember. We didn't go anywhere special. I actually missed my one chance to go to the beach. We mostly stayed home, taking just a couple of trips to Charlottesville, which is "home," too. We made memories here-- happy, happy memories. Good, good days.

August was not good. It began with an infection that left me sicker than I remember being in the last two decades. And then, it just bumped along some more--one in-real-life hit after another, each one surprising me more than the next. I sort of staggered through September, trying with all my might to recover my midsummer joy. 

With all my might.

September ended with a heaving sob. My might depleted. Joy eluded.

October dawned cold, blustery, brittle. We celebrate the feast of my favorite saint on October first. An old friend challenged me to look for roses. Roses in the October cold. "Please pick for me a rose from the heavenly garden and send it to me as a message of love."

The roses of midsummer have faded and fallen. I cannot gather their blooms and bring them into the heart of this home. Instead, I have to find the October roses. With the waning summer, I feel my idealism fading; I feel some longheld notions finally acknowledging defeat after years of fighting with all my might; I fully feel the reality of messy lives. And I see that I cannot , no matter how hard I try, create the perfect childhood and hold it safely for all my children. They will be hurt. They will hurt themselves. We will feel pain and there will be fading blooms and browning leaves.

It's time to embrace autumn. It's time to acknowledge that there is suffering, to let myself know it, meet its gaze, and accept it. Time to stop fighting change, stop denying that this, too, is a fallen world in need of a a Savior. Time to stop trying to play on through the pain. It's time to remember that pruning is painful, but ever so fruitful. It's time to recognize that perhaps my most important role as a teacher of my children is to teach them how to greet the hurt and then to carry on in faith.

The breeze blows and lifts my chin; it's time to look up from the rain-sodden, trampled underbrush of late summer's waning blooms and to see His glory above me. It's time to know that it's not about my might.

It never was.

I see that now.

The joy of the summer was never of my making; it was the fruit of His grace. He waits for me, watching patiently, asking me to trust Him with this new season of life. 

"God is good," the Spirit whispers through the gathering storm, the rustling, autumn-gloried leaves, "all the time."