Celebrating Baby Girl Foss

Between trips to Charlottesville during the week that was, all the lovely ladies gathered to celebrate the nearly-here birth of Baby Girl Foss. It's almost time to hold her!

My sister threw an incredibly beautiful and super-sweet pink baby shower. It was lots of fun to eat, drink, and be merry as Kristin opened gifts. There weren't nearly as many handmade items from me as I'd imagined. She's not even here yet, and I'm already not the grandmother I envisioned. But I thought I'd sew all of the last three weeks and that turned out to be not the plan at all. I have several layette items cut and waiting, so I'm going to get busy. 

Karoline did make some very sweet self-binding receiving blankets. The tutorial is here. Don't believe that lady for a minute when she tells you it's a ten minute project. At least don't believe her if you're a normal, regular seamstress. Or if you're seven years old. 

Katie did a great job embellishing some cloth diapers with Anna Maria Horner ribbons. So pretty!

And, of course, there was baby's first book basket:-).

I did do quite a bit of reading this week. I listened to Bob Goff's Love Does in the car as I drove. It was nice enough to pass the time, but I don't really recommend the audio version. i think I would have liked it better if I'd just read it for myself. And, of course, I read Surprised by Motherhood. I talked about it quite a bit earlier this week. Do drop by that post and tell Kristin what how you've been surprised by motherhood. You'll be entered to win a copy of the book!

In the book basket:

Angelina Ballerina

Goodnight Moon

Pat the Bunny

Guess How Much I Love You

In the Garden with Van Gogh

Dancing with Degas

A Picnic with Monet

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

The Very Hungry Caterpillar 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

What have you been sewing and reading lately? Tell me all about! It's spring at last--what does that do for our needle project list?

Surprised by Motherhood

All during the Week that Was, in waiting rooms, while waiting in tiny exam rooms and wondering if we'd been forgotten, and on sunny patios while eating salad in solitary, I had a companion. In fits and spurts, and all out of order, I read Surprised by Motherhood.

A few pages in, the story was familiar. I recognized it. I heard in a lilting, lovely South African accent. Three years ago, as we sat creekside, Lisa-Jo with her brand new baby girl, and watched wild boys romp happily through the woods, I asked her to tell me this very story.

I'd just promised a mom with cancer that if she were to leave her children--if the unthinkable happened and cancer snuffed out life--I'd be there. I'd do whatever it was she wanted me to do for them. And then, I realized I had no idea what that was. So, on a glorious day, in my favorite place, Lisa-Jo and I sat and talked and talked and talked. She knew what it was. She knew it all too well. It was the familiar, often-played record of her memory. Lisa-Jo had lost her mother to cancer when she was 18. She knew exactly how it felt. She shared those memories with me and she told me something else--something I rarely heard from other mothers. She told me all about how she didn't want to be anybody's mother, how she came to motherhood much by surprise and how every day it continued to baffle, bemuse, and make beautiful her life.

Those musings are a book now and that book is lovely and lilting and lyrical as a South African mango grove. It's beautifully written and refreshingly honest. Every time I sat to read (and after the first few chapters, I read all out of order), I kept thinking that I wanted my daughter-in-love to have this book right now. Kristin is just weeks (days maybe?) from birthing her first baby. Lisa-Jo just might be the perfect doula, not so much to coach her through those hours of birth, though there are definitely words of encouragement needed there and Lisa-Jo has them, but to coach her into the new becoming that happens when that baby--naked and wrinkly and vulnerable--is laid across a woman's chest and forever embedded into her heart. A girl needs a doula for everything that happens after that moment of birth and 

Lisa-Jo Baker is doula extraordinaire. 

When we become mothers, when the first few stitches of that new person are cast on in our wombs, or in our hearts, we set our feet on a path that stretches into eternity and there is no turning back. We become for that new soul the person who will be there to feel the aches of both body and spirit, to feed the bellies and the minds, to kiss the boo-boos and hear about the front porch kiss. We walk that path with bloodied feet sometimes, stretched in ways we cannot have imagined. Head thrown back against the pillows we listen to suck and gulp in the dark of the midnight hours, baby gathering food and warmth and the very essence of unconditional love from our bodies and in that same place in the blink of an eye, we listen nearly frantic for the slam of the car door, the footsteps in the hall, the "Goodnight, Mom" whispered in a baritone hush. We are there for all of it. All of it. The glorious moments of the championship winning goals and the crushing humiliation of bad decisions. We are in it for life. 

And I remember often that spring day three years ago when Lisa-Jo let me see what life looked like if the unthinkable happens, and a mother is torn away too soon. She spoke into my fiercest fears. She poured grace, rich and honeyed, but sticky and messy, into the deepest doubts I harbor. What if? What if we don't get to mother forever? Well, then God works some crazy miracles and makes an extraordinary mother of the motherless child. Further, He uses her to mother weary mothers all over the world. This book is His gift to every woman who wondered if she really could do it--whatever the it of that mothering day was. This book is the gentle, lilting voice of a very good mother in the ear of every woman who has ever wished that someone would come along and mother her for awhile. Read this book and then pass it along to a young woman, ripe with child, who is likely to be very surprised by motherhood. 

If you just can't wait until yours arrives, you can read a digital sampler of the book here. But you're going to want your own. and you'll probably want an extra to tuck into the basket next time you deliver a meal to a new mama or a baby gift to shower. 

Would you like to win a copy? Leave a comment below. Tell Kristin what surprised you most about motherhood. Let's gather up a big, beautiful, maybe messy bouquet for the new mama. if you leave a comment, you'll be entered to win a copy of Lisa-Jo's Surprised by Motherhood.

the Week that Was*

We knew we were in for a week. When the calendar pages were inked in, we knew it was going to be rough going. Shawn's funeral on Saturday. Granddad's burial on Monday. No way around it. The hurt was going to run raw and deep.

It's not like the prior week had been a walk in the park. You know? The week with Spring Break written across seven days in bright, pink, optimistic ink?  Patrick came home sick and got sicker over the week. Shawn died on Wednesday and we all grieved with Michael--grieved for Michael. Life moved in slow motion, but not the good slow motion of respite and vacation. Instead, it was the forced slow motion of thick emotion. By Friday, I didn't care that Patrick's primary care doctor was in Charlottesville, I took him to our pediatrician, who diagnosed strep throat. He diagnosed me with the same and I figured we'd both turn around quickly. Patrick went back to school, tried to go back to training, and ended up in the team doctor's office first thing, the first day back. That Tuesday, he was diagnosed with mono.

Patrick came home with his coach Friday afternoon. The coach was a friend of Shawn's, coming north for the memorial service. (If it seems like everyone was a friend of Shawn's, it's not an illusion.) We all cried through Saturday. Patrick's eyes swelled with everyone else's, but they seemed to stay swollen. Then came Monday. Again, we all cried. Patrick was  faucet. I kind of insisted he stay home Tuesday and just rest. He did. Wendesday morning, Mary Beth drove him back to school and I fought the voice telling me that I should be the one to go and to stay. {Never again will I fight a voice that sounds like God. I'm very certain I heard the Holy Spirit and said, "La La La La."} He went again to the team doctor. She took one look at him and sent him straight away to UVa hospital, where no fewer than six eye specialists looked with wonder and awe and not a little respect at the disease in his eyes. 

He called me and casually said, "Yeah, it's not pink eye. It's scleritis." 

Clearly, Mr. Casual had not yet Googled.

I did. And then I started packing before I even finished reading. I scooped up Sarah, called my stepmother, and threw bags in the car. Before I left the neighborhood, the team doctor called. I told her I was on my way and asked if I were overrreacting. 

"No, no! Come on! You need to be here." And she talked to me for the next half hour as I drove west.

So I met with doctors and coaches and contacted teachers and tried to persuade my boy to eat. We looked at his new diagnosis from every angle and watched and waited to see what his eyes would do. On Friday, we drove home.

Sunday was Kristin's baby shower.

Sunday night, I drove back to Charlottesville with Patrick and Sarah.

Today, we repeat last week's rounds. 

Throughout the last few days, we've had exactly one conversation about blindness. 

Patrick, on the stairs of the athletic building as we walked up to see the coaches: You know, I could lose my eyesight (clearly, Mr. Casual decided to Google after all).

Me: I know, but we're not to where you need to worry about that yet.

Patrick: If I were blind, I couldn't play soccer. 

Me: True. (And a million other unsaid things.)

With the exception of a small hemorrhage Saturday night, he's been making steady positive progress. I think today should be full of good news. Often, scleritis is a harbinger of an autoimmune disease. In Patrick's case, it appears to be the complication of mono. That's been reported one other time in medical history, from what we can find. He's a little impressed with himself as nearly everyone who has anything to do with eyes at the big teaching hospital comes to take a look.

I've missed being in this virtual spot with you. I have so many thoughts in my head these days, but they find their way, handwritten, into my journal. Shawn's life--and Shawn's death--weigh heavy and so I process with words and ponder in my heart. 

The calendar page will turn tomorrow. And with it, we all look expectantly to the hope and joy of the spring.

Gospel from this Sunday (well, yes...)

John 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him, 
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” — which means Sent —.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.

His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, 
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is, “
but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”

They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God,
because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again, 
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”

They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said, 
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him, and
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.

 

Think

 Our life is sometimes similar to that of the blind man who is open to the light, who is open to God, who is open to his grace. Sometimes, unfortunately, our life is a little like that of the doctors of the law: from the height of our pride we judge others, and, in the end, the Lord! Today we are invited to open ourselves up to the light of Christ to bear fruit in our life, to eliminate non-Christian ways of acting; we are all Christians, but all of us, all of us, at times act in ways that are not Christian, we act in ways that are sinful. We must repent, we must stop acting in these ways so we can set out decisively on the road of sanctity. This road has its beginning in Baptism. We too are “enlightened” by Christ in Baptism, so that, as St. Paul notes, we can walk as “children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), with humility, patience, mercy. These doctors of the law did not have humility, patience or mercy! ~Pope Francis

Pray

Dear Lord, It is spiritual blindness that is the most frightening of all. Please God, let me see everything you put in my path with humility, patience, and mercy.

Act

Pope Francis suggests this: I would like to suggest to you today...to open the Gospel of John and read this passage of chapter 9. It will do you well, because in this way you will see this road from blindness to light and the other, wicked road toward deeper blindness. Let us ask ourselves about the state of our heart. Do I have an open heart or a closed one? Open or closed to God? Open or closed to my neighbor? We always have some closure in us born of sin, of mistakes, of errors. We must not be afraid! Let us open ourselves up to the Lord. He awaits us always to help us see better, to give us light, to forgive us.

How can I pray for you today?

*It had been just a week when I started to write...

Day is Done

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We laid our beloved Granddad to rest on Monday. It was a beautiful, victorious day. 

When God Picks Your Lent

Lent has begun. Every year, I sit quietly before it begins and I make a private list of how I will observe Lent. I try to find the right balance of “give something up” and “do something extra.” And more often than not, God has other ideas. It’s not that He objects to or overrides my grand plans, it’s just that He provides more. God plans Lent. I just have to show up.

The first week of Lent, I watched a young man die of cancer while my eldest son, his dear friend, stood helplessly in an ICU. The second week of Lent began with death come too soon. The third week of Lent will find me at two funerals—one for a very old man and one for a very young man, My little girls balk when we read Easter stories. They want me to skip the pages that hold the crucifixion and the burial in the tomb. No one really wants to look at death. But sometimes, God picks your Lent.

Lent has a way of forcing us to consider the ends of our lives. It has a way of asking us to answer essential questions. Every year, Lent comes along and makes old men and women of all of us. In a way, Lent is an annual practice for the twilight of life. St. John of the Cross writes about that time, “In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possession and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.”

So, too, in the Lent of the year, as the earth starts to warm soft and damp beneath our feet and there are the faintest stirrings of new life in the trees, we stop and reflect and look to our souls. How much have we loved? How well have we loved? Is there giving yet to give? It is not yet over. We are not yet to the close of this life.

Lent asks us to closely examine the way we live in light of the way we want to die. This Lent, a man will be put to rest just a couple weeks after his thirty-second birthday. I assure you, we know not the hour or the moment that Jesus calls us home.

What we do know is that for today, for this season, He gives us Lent. He beckons us, with the Universal Church, to draw closer to Him, to truly see the plans He has for our lives. He wants us to surrender our plans—our plans for Lent and our plans for next summer and our plans for next year. He wants us to leave them at the foot of His cross and to see that He has a better plan.

We can’t skip the pages with the crucifixion and the burial in the tomb. We have to hang there with Him and to see from His vantage point the sick and the hurting and the poor and the grieving. We have to understand that He hung there to bring them mercy.

Your hour has not yet come. Walk down from Cavalry’s hill. Be the hands and the feet of the crucified Lord and extend His mercy. You only have one life to offer. Make it count.