i talked to my dad yesterday and discovered that he'd up and sold the farm...the house he bought when i was six months old will be home no more as of the last week in june. it's strange, it's unsettling to find out how tied i can become to things of this earth, as well as how stinking sentimental i get sometimes. i think back to two christmases ago, the last time we visited...the last time i'd walk on the brick red dining room floor, the last time i'd do laundry in the basement among my dad's vast (and well organized) tool collection, the last time i'd tuck my kids in for sleep in the upstairs room my parents had painted pink in 1972 for their baby girls. so many memories there, such a deep sense of belonging all over that property. my dad told me that he'd sold it to a family with three little girls of their own, and that made me smile. as i'm losing my sense of balance in what i can now go back to when i'm in michigan, i'm hoping those little girls will grow up climbing the ancient apple tree in the backyard, swinging their legs under the kitchen counter perched on those high stools, sitting on the smooth front porch among the yews, elbows on knees, chins in palms, contemplating plans for that particular summer day...i hope they love that it's only a two block bike ride to the neighborhood park, that the sloping black driveway is fun to shovel in the winter, that they have a root celler and a laundry chute and back closets in the upstairs bedrooms to explore. i wonder if they will dig up my stash of quarters under my old bedroom window.
i hope, as i am losing this for myself, that it will be a house that becomes a home to them. i hope their parents take really good care of the place. and i hope i can stomach staying in a finished basement of a condo surrounded by displaced memorabilia next time i'm in town...

recovering from spring break - we didn't go anywhere special, just having all three kiddos home all day every day took some getting used to. I'm trying to look on the bright side of the upcoming summer, instead of worrying about what in the world we're going to do all day. the last two days i've spent greasing my rusty politically active arm...an issue having to do with our little town losing the close by bigger town's wonderful library services - our own city council is working against us, and we're in a race to call all the folks we know to get them to call their senators by tomorrow or else...or else we're going to start a PETITION, doggone it! fire and bookworms uniting in little ol kansas...

but the spring trees are blooming, the forsythias are in all their yellow glory, the grass is getting greener with every nighttime blast of nitrogen charged lightning, it's a fine time of year to be living in tornado alley.

oh, and watch yourself. tomorrow's april fools day :)

"treat your mind like a bad neighborhood...don't go there alone"

sound advice if i ever heard it.

life is not always fair and free, life is downright mean spirited sometimes. underneath the current pushy tickertape of the daily news of me, i can sometimes find inspiration, though...today, i would've liked to respond to the developing top story with a three musketeers in one hand and the manuel entitled "how to reconnect with the mother you never knew after a friend of hers unwittingly gets in touch with you and she herself has to write and apologize for intruding into your otherwise probably perfect life" in the other, but it was not to be so. i searched around the edges and came up with a mess of granny smith apples and an uncanny desire to once again try my hand at pastry-making from scratch (enough time lapses between these urges that i forget the heavy flour/pie crust crumb dusting my kitchen ends up with when i venture there)...
what came out was a not so bad homemade apple pie sporting a fabulous crust, and some peace of mind for me. that amy charmichael was right about doing the next thing; it heartens, it empowers to accomplish the small what you can under the looming shadow of what you cannot.

"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
though stretched from sky to sky."

found penciled on a wall in the room of a patient in an insane asylum...i am encouraged in that what we can't see or understand, He does, and can, in perfect clarity. So we can trust him perfectly.

"Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..."

*************************************
He not only fills in the empty places, he plants fields of wildflowers there.
I am blessed to be His daughter.

there is a calm place in me tonight that used to be filled with anxiety, fear, anger, dread. there is a knowing whose hands i am in, whose will it is for there to be breath in my lungs, oxygen in my blood. there is still a gaping hole where solid trust should be, and it is scary from a distance, but not up close today - i can't feel the emptiness yawning around me like a canyon as i so often have today. to come to a place in the midst of a struggle with another person where you can breathe, where you can put your hand in the hand of Jesus and lean into him, and with wonder - wonder! - ponder what it is that he is doing there, in your desert, in your shadow of yet another fading mirage, what he is up to and how he will see you through; confidence in his love, his perfect father plan letting you feel light inside...this is nothing short of miraculous. but that is the God who claims us, yes? a God of miracles, within and without us, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

this weekend we went to an 80's party (can you think of a greater way to spend a friday night ? ;) ...

...and i went with a friend to a watercolor workshop in kansas city.



chad's off to see the billions in lawrence tonight..no pics, but you can still catch the show if you read this not too long after i post it :)

..as it rained, it froze; and it rained a lot. we're living in iceland, a wonderland where everything the sun touches glimmers and shines, and the icicles jutting down from stop signs, streetlights, and fence posts alike are longer than i ever remember seeing in kansas. now if it only weren't so darned COLD...

Hmm... shows up #17 on an MSN search for "calories burned playing guitar". Really, I didn't blog those words in that order...I don't even PLAY guitar. HA!

so i've managed to beat that nasty flu bug once more...no fun, for sure, but it's nice to come out on the other side in one piece (which, as some of you probably know, absolutely does not seem possible as you're navigating the rolling waves that have replaced the floor between your bed and your bathroom)...

Anyway...c was a trooper and took care of just about everything except laundry for three whole days - kudos aplenty to him. i watched way too much bad tv (do we really have nothing else to debate about in this country besides whether michael jackson really, after all, IS a child molester ???), lost a pound or two, and actually got a sore ear from having it pressed to my pillow for so long.

But despite this and other little trials and yukky stuff I've had to deal with lately, I am thankful. To God. For my overall health, for my family and friends, for warm socks and
good books and an upcoming all day watercolor class. I'm working on that resolution to just try and see the glass as half full once in a while, and I'm finding it rather...settling.

lots of frigid temperatures and ice, no snow, though...the residue over this kansas land is a grimy chalky mess - not too pretty or inspiring. we're shivering with our shoulders up to our ears, we're drying out in the forced hot blowing air..we don't wash the streaks of salt off of the car because we know that in this weather and trek from rural landscape to town cleaning it is an exercise in futility - it will not stick. the festivities are a memory, spring is a distant hope, she rides a slow train towards us through fair fields blooming brightly with flowers, with tree buds, with green life...her hands are in her lap and she is dozing, the soft clacking rhythm her lullaby, far far from here. i clean out closets, i take the kids to the library, i throw an extra blanket on everybody at night, i wait for it to be civil outdoors. i finished marcia ford's 'memoir of a misfit' - lovely book, i've already lent it out; and now i'm reading 'walk on - the spiritual journey of u2' by steve stockman, along with the ezzo's 'preteen wise - parenting your child from eight to twelve years' because it's been brought to my attention by this comment and that awareness lately that my oldest son is indeed exiting little kid-dom and what next? here's to a shot at preparedness...

happy january, that no mans land month.

enjoying my Christmas present to me - natalie merchant's 'the house carpenter's daughter'. wonderful stuff, etheral and gritty at the same time, echos of history sung clearly, folk in its glory. i recommend you give it a listen...

my brand new niece lies in an incubator across the atlantic from me, weighing not quite four pounds, in a hospital forty five minutes away from her mom, papa, and big brothers. i need to be there, but i just don't think i'll get my christmas wish this year. if you come here and you're the praying sort, you sure can pray that little hannah marie will grow and stay healthy and get to go home soon...

mmm...pomegranates.

ready or not, here come the holidays. thanksgiving is next week already...i, the sentimental dreamer, can still be found gazing out the kitchen window at the scraps of last summer still hanging on...the purple and white swirly rubber ball wedged under the deck, the baby blue plastic colander tilting atop the sand pile, the rusting red grill, stoically waiting to be wheeled around to the garage, thus hailing winter, or at least autumn. i know we've gone on the field trip with jesse's kindergarten class to the pumpkin patch, i know our porch mums are nodding their round heads off to brittle brown sleep, i know my one year anniversary to having joined the y and our nine year anniversary to signing our marriage license is fast approaching, yet my mind cannot wrap itself around turkey centered feasting, snow crunching under my nikes, the moon reduced to a thin white pebble far, far away...not just yet. i'm stuck in the purgatory of between-seasons, i'm suspended between recollection and reality, i'm fine here for today, thank you. i've got one more barefoot run in the grass to let loose in, one more push for lucy in the yellow swing at the park, laughing with her in the sun. shivering cold will come soon enough, and i'll look for the treasures under the rocks of winters' days when they can no longer be ignored...but i'll take ignorance's bliss this day and pretend it can go on for a good long while...

kansas (the eight year old) wants to know...

"if twelve o clock at night is called midnight, then how is one o clock in the morning morning already?"

any wiser parents than i out there?

four days ago some good friends of ours had a beautiful baby boy - their first child...and yesterday a fourth grader from our kids' school died of a seizure - i attend a bible study with the mom whose home this happened at (the girl was visiting a friend, they were going to eat dinner and go to awana together. she was the only child of a single mother...)

the soaring, miraculous heights collide with the depths of human despair and pain this week in our little world.

life is charging by at an alarming pace for us these days...work, basketball for the boys, lucy's a flower girl in another wedding, mops, bible studies - one for me, one with the whole family, holidays, school field trips, correspondence, going to the y, friends having babies, church, choir for kansas, cooking, cleaning, shopping, my determination to make it to at least one cider mill this fall, kids making new friends and organizing times to play with them, remoldeling our basement, email, putting together shoeboxes for operation christmas child (a wonderful and worthwhile project we happily support) by the middle of november...the list goes on and on; much more than a calgon moment could make a dent in, daydreaming at stoplights only makes things worse, falling into bed exhausted at the end of long day after long day is my reprieve. even so, i don't think i would trade it...for the joy set before me i'll endure just about anything.

yesterday my little one year old ford focus wagon had to be towed away from an accident scene. Chad and Jesse (my almost six year old) were the only ones in the car when it was crashed into by a couple of high school kids on their way home from football practice, blowing off a stop sign at a country intersection. the only one who got hurt was the driver of the other car, who had to be hospitalized. strange to think of someone lying in a hospital bed from having smashed into my car...c and jesse are fine, not a scratch. two days ago another guy was killed in a car wreck on that very road...sure gives one pause. i really can't imagine getting a phone call with worse news than i got yesterday, and my loss there only entailed a piece of machinery. i stop, i shudder...i take a deep breath, i give solemn thanks to God, who doesn't miss a thing -not a sparrow, not a liquid grey family car on a collision course.