an evening before the rains hit

~ for an autumn bouquet ~

I am thankful:

~ for a quilt-picnic in a beautiful old park with apricot jam, rosemary bread, blood-orange soda; and basil and tomatoes from our yard  - just the two of us

~ for getting to explore an old neighbourhood in Seattle in the sun, hand-in-hand, peeking in yards and onto back verandas; seeing stately old homes and being amazed by the colours turning on the trees - all lined up like gentlemen in a row

~ for watching the WU crews row on lake union - streaking colours rippling by

~ for tiptoeing into a secret green alcove, right on the water, and getting to see the amazing houseboats in all their colourful fun & fancy - up close

~ for sitting at gasworks park watching the sunset reflect off the Seattle skyline & seeing the harvest moon rise - on the opposite side of the lake

~ for the guys at the flying apron in Seattle giving my husband and I an impromptu bag of (chocolatey vegan, gf) goodies - for free - just because we came in at closing time

{39/365 is about this being the last year of my fourth decade. 

I am watching for God in my day-to-day life & I am writing about the gifts He gives me in this season. 
I am listening for His daily, beautiful presence in my years.... all 39 of them and counting. 

This week I have been thinking about how powerful gratitude is to keep perspective & keep me going. 

Please feel free to join me. }

surprise

Every year I forget that the big transition back to school means a new normal will once again have to be created at our house. This year we had extra transition that only added to - and sped up - that process.

Besides all kinds of health craziness in three out of four of us, we had to cancel a long anticipated vacation & some special plans, too. And on top of that we also got a new, very little family member. The end result was just a whole lot of change and upheaval leaving us all needing some intentional re-orientating. I haven't run in nine days and my inner world feels all topsy-turvy and tired.

Surprisingly the puppy has helped the most with all that. She's easy, sweet and has already stolen our hearts entirely. We knew we were ready to start looking for a pup - but we thought it would take a couple months, not three days!

Turned out her timing was perfect. She's brought so much peace and laughter to our home. She makes our family feel all complete and cozy.

I'm getting made fun of a lot, too. I of the "only if she's crate trained and she can never get on the couch or in your beds" etc. etc. preaching... am now eating (happy) humble pie.

(She sleeps with me every night.) (On my bed.)

(I know!)

I love her as much as the kids do.

{39/365 is about this being the last year of my fourth decade. 

I am watching for God in my day-to-day life & I am writing about the gifts He gives me in this season. 
I am listening for His daily, beautiful presence in my years.... all 39 of them and counting. 

This week I have been thinking about the surprises of laughter & unconditional love - expressed in a little apricot puppy. 

Please feel free to join me. }

tour guide

My daughter has developed a new practice the last couple months that has been baffling me.

She literally asks me dozens of questions a day about the most routine things. Not the kind of questions she used to ask as a younger child (when the why's and why-not's were abounding) - but more detailed inquisitions like how do I wrap my floss around my hands? If we run the dryer twice for a big duvet do I use the same dryer sheets? Which way do I wipe down the counter after I brush my teeth? How do I hold the handles on the big red bucket we use for watering the pot plants? Should she return the extra granola to the big jar?

It has both flummoxed and annoyed me. Where was my independent daughter?! The one who did not want to be told what to do and had her own creative way for approaching everything in life and then some?

I've simultaneously been realizing that I have a full-fledged 'tween on my hands. Her art work has changed - it's more detailed and emotive. She's writing songs and crying more easily about daily things. It's beautiful. Her heart and passions are unfolding and I am both mesmerized and challenged to grow along with her.

She picked her own back-to-school style this year with confidence (thanks to Grandma): no polka dots and bright colours. She's more into florals, she said, she likes jeweled tones. (They look beautiful on you, I answered, you have olive skin your mama can only dream of.)

This year was a funky jeans jacket and skinny belts buckled around her waist. This year was reminders all through the aisles at Target that our styles are not the same, hers is different from mine. She said it softly and sweetly - but it was an assertion nonetheless. One I was proud of and I'm dearly curious to see develop.

I'm so proud of her.

So what was with the non-stop questions all day long about such simple things? One night it was about where to put a dozen things we were picking up off her floor after a big clean-out of her drawers. She was throwing away things only one year ago I was begging her to get rid of. Remnants of a innocent history she will forget long before I do.

At first I worried it was insecurity - was she nervous I would be upset if she was getting things wrong? Was she feeling pressured to get things right or done a certain way? I offered more freedom and even less directives; the questions amped up more.

Slowly I began to have an inkling. I watched her questions and how they fanned out. She came in twice for hugs and reassurances before bedtime one day, and once she was tucked in above a cleaned-up floor and freshly washed sheets, she asked me to sing our song to her. I knelt down in the dark - my favourite mama task of all - and stroked her cheeks and kissed her eyelids and sang her the song I had memorized as a six year old, made up between me and God as we talked late one night in my double-decker bright red bunk-bed.

She knew the parts where I pause to kiss her forehead and I knew the parts where she smiles with her eyes closed. The questions, I was realizing, were coming from a new sense of vastness. From a big unknown laid out before her. I asked her about it. Does the world seem bigger to you, Sis? I pulled her close - does growing up feel overwhelming right now?

She nodded her head and her eyes filled with opalescent tears. I felt her little shoulders shake and release. You are doing so amazing at such a hard job, I told her. Growing up is the hardest work of all and you are doing it beautifully. I think, I added, that you are getting even more beautiful every day, how is that even possible? She smiled shyly, her eyes squinting at me, testing my unobjective veracity.

She asked me a handful of new questions and this time I relaxed. I realized it's not fear. It's needing a tour guide. She was reaching for my hand with vulnerable question marks and letting me show her the way into a brand new landscape. I felt indescribably humbled and almost giddy with honour. My sweet young lady was trusting me to show her the way into a brand new (to her) reality.

As usual, I feel indebted to my girl. Her unabashed trust to learn and ask and be uncertain in the face of something too big for her, is a powerful example to me. I've been thinking back to almost five years ago when kindergarten seemed like such a big milestone and I was so nervous about letting her go off into a big world that I was worried would scare her. Her confident stride (with a still-nervous pale face) and her telling me adamantly that it was okay for me to leave, she would be okay, was miles ahead of me.

Today these new questions are a gift. I treasure them and wish I had a drawer to tuck them into that I would never want to clean out. I want to remember her face forever as she asks me again and again about something inconsequential. I realize that what makes it consequential is her beautiful openness behind it all to reach out and learn and grow together.

I want to be the same.

{39/365 is about this being the last year of my fourth decade. 

I am watching for God in my day-to-day life & I am writing about the gifts He gives me in this season. 
I am listening for His daily, beautiful presence in my years.... all 39 of them and counting. 

This week I have been thinking about the gift of being trusted. 

Please feel free to join me. }

teaspoonfuls

I have a friend who talks about how we live our life in teaspoonfuls instead of big drinks. We often are so thirsty for the big gulps, she says, that we miss the perfect teaspoons of joy right there in front of us.

She said to me that she thinks this is the way love works, too. We wish it would work instant miracles and create dramatic change - but instead love tends to chip away tiny bits of change at a time. And if we hang in there long enough, and celebrate the teaspoonfuls, eventually, sometimes, we do sometimes see some big redemptions.

My friend and I talked a lot about the story lines of our lives; about how to rightly grieve the ones we thought we would have and accept the ones that are. Even though the ones that are often include loss and heartache. It's something we don't talk as much about when we're younger and dreams are fresh and hot off the press.

Embracing heartache, I've been reminded this week, is the only way to feel joy when it arrives.

I have another friend who has been reading quotes to me from C. S. Lewis' book The Four Loves. He talks about how we don't know why, but heartbreak is often the way God chooses to bring us closer to joy.

I had yet another friend send me some scriptures this week:

from Romans chapter 4 

v.18 - 25

When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"

Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, 

"It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless.

I've been thinking about those words a lot. I wonder how Abraham waited and trusted; let alone "plunged in strong!" - and what he thought he was believing for - as his story was painfully rewritten before his aging eyes.

I wonder about the heartache that made Sarah laugh when the hoping place in her heart was spoken to, but felt struck by loss instead. I wonder about her temptation to rewrite her story herself when she felt abandoned, and how Abraham may have felt drained of all his dreams and comforts by the time his son was finally born.

I wonder if he worried that the damage to his heart (and his wife's) done by their waiting would make their hearts numb or calloused to their promise when it was fulfilled? How did their hearts not get hard and bitter? How did he not lose hope?

Their story isn't my story but it's been illuminating for me so well the truth that unless we let ourselves feel deep pain and embrace it purposefully - in the context of belief in and worship of the Promise Giver - we will never feel joy the way we are meant to either.

I have to confess I don't know how to do that. At all.

But I wonder if maybe it comes in teaspoonfuls.

I see in their all-too-human example that a story is still worth not giving up on - even when that means taking our hands off our own steering wheel and drinking hope in teaspoonfuls, when really what we are wishing for is a dramatic rescue, a big promise and to be saved from heartache.

Heartbrokenness in the face of an unexpected plot change in our lives while being simultaneously called to hope can feel cruel. We, too, worry about the damage done to our hearts and if we'll be too grizzled and broken to celebrate the joy of the happy ending? Let alone how we stay alive to teaspoonfuls that continually awaken a hope it would be easier to die to?

I see in their story that little choices - daily ones, teaspoon sized ones - in love and commitment, trust and hope, and being willing to wait for the long haul -  are powerful.

{39/365 is about this being the last year of my fourth decade. 

I am watching for God in my day-to-day life & I am writing about the gifts He gives me in this season. 
I am listening for God's daily, beautiful presence in my years.... all 39 of them and counting. 

This week I have been thinking about the gift of teaspoon sized choices. 

Please feel free to join me. }

connection

This clarity came to me recently: If I am seeking connection in important ways and in key relationships, than it matters what I am connected to. 

I remember going to a yoga class led by a highly intuitive teacher. As we started the class she asked us all to unplug. "What are you connected to?" she asked us. "Unplug from that consciously now and give yourself freedom to be connected to what you are supposed to be connected to."

I've been thinking about connectedness a lot. About unity and what to do to create and protect that. Here are just some of my thoughts:

• In some ways seeking connection can be a form of idolatry. If I am plugged into feedback and short term affirmation (facebook, email, texting, cells, even friendships at times) and prioritizing them with my time and my attention - than I am not finding satisfaction in feedback from one more vast, permanent and important source.
• In some ways it's a form of idealizing. If I am seeking joy, beauty and kindness in tastes and sensory indulgences, in instant gratification - than I am not finding my needs first met in the one who knows how to distinguish with the greatest clarity when sweetness is needed and when a well-needed rebuke or redirection is better.
• In some ways it's a form of pure distraction. The question becomes what am I avoiding? Loneliness? (It won't be found in my usual diversions.) Heartache? (It won't be healed through any means I can control.)  Lack of encouragement? Being misunderstood? Feeling unsafe? Unheard? Exhausted? Broken? Wounded? Healing? All are diversionary means until I am rooted and prioritized in a source that knows no end and is my actual healing.

The maker of my appetites and my fears* is the only source that can calm them, meet them and fulfill them all. He is my only satisfaction. He's created me that way - to be satisfied by Him and hungry when anything else is used to fill me up internally. The problem with that is He holds to His very own (inexplicable) time-table. And His sense of justice is never my own. This has to be wrestled with. And wrestled with in Him and what I believe His ways are.

Safety and security in the ways I measure them are not His aim and won't fulfill me. He is not motivated for my defense, short-term comfort or my endorsement. No, He is motivated by love. He is my comfort, it is found in Him. He is my shield, He is my hiding place. He is my very great reward, He is not superficial or temporary. He does not want to lead me to something I long for. No, He wants me for himself.

He created me for connection, yes. Connection to, and unity with, only, foremost and primarily: Himself.

What am I unifying myself to?

Unless it is unity steeped into obedience, unless it is unity with who and how and what I am created to be, unless it is unifying myself with the Maker of all things, including my needs - I am actually disconnecting myself. I am actually removing the possibility of connection from the very ones I am reaching out to and longing to be one with.

So often those longings come down to difficult obedience. So often I am thankful that His kindness leads me back to Himself - even if the road there involves repentance.

As *Mary Oliver wrote:

"Maker of All Things,

including appetite, including stealth,

including the fear that makes

all of us sometime or other,

flee for the sake

of our small and precious lives,

let me abide in your shadow-

let me hold on

to the edge of your robe

as you determine what you must let be lost

and what will be saved."

Or here as Francis Thompson profoundly pours out:

"Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said),

'And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited—

Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!' "

And as St. Augustine prayed in his great Confessions:

"Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that Thou "resistest the proud," -  yet man, this part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."

My gift right now is new understanding and an opportunity for a new way of pursuing connection. These are the verses I have been meditating on this last weekend from Hosea chapter 14:

"I will make a fresh start with Israel.

She'll burst into bloom like a crocus in the spring.

She'll put down deep oak tree roots,

She'll become a forest of oaks!

She'll become splendid—like a giant sequoia,

her fragrance like a grove of cedars!

Those who live near her will be blessed by her,

be blessed and prosper like golden grain...

[Be] finished with gods that are no-gods.

From now on I'm the one who answers and satisfies her.

I am like a luxuriant fruit tree.

Everything you need is to be found in me.

If you want to live well,

make sure you understand all of this.

If you know what's good for you,

you'll learn this inside and out.

God's paths get you where you want to go."

{39/365 is about this being the last year of my fourth decade. 

I am watching for God in my day-to-day life & I am writing about the gifts He gives me in this season. 
I am listening for God's daily, beautiful presence in my years.... all 39 of them and counting. 

This week I have been thinking about the gift of connection. 

Please feel free to join me. }

friendships

I was running this morning with a dear friend and said to her: "You know, I just didn't expect to be relearning all the hard stuff still at this age!" But I am. And I appreciate (dearly) all I continue to learn from the amazing women who have given me the gift of their friendships. I am constantly in awe of the beauty in my friends' hearts. It humbles me and teaches me and opens me and allows me to continue to learn more about love.

My gifts this week have come in the form of dear friends. One special one - who I have been friends with since we were my daughter's age - read a poem to me for my birthday. We sat in our running clothes at my kitchen table ready to head out for a sunny morning run. The house was quiet with the kids having just tumbled out the door for camps. She cracked open the book and began to cry as she read. And so did I.

It says exactly what I am thankful for in my beautiful friendships - this week I have a deep gratitude for all the women in my life who are themselves and by being that are such a gift to me.*

Love

by Roy Croft

I love you,

Not only for what you are,

But for what I am

When I am with you.

I love you,

Not only for what

You have made of yourself,

But for what

You are making of me.

I love you

For the part of me

That you bring out;

I love you

For putting your hand

Into my heaped-up heart

And passing over

All the foolish, weak things

That you can’t help

Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out

Into the light

All the beautiful belongings

That no one else had looked

Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you

Are helping me to make

Of the lumber of my life

Not a tavern

But a temple;

Out of the works

Of my every day

Not a reproach

But a song.

I love you

Because you have done

More than any creed

Could have done

To make me good

And more than any fate

Could have done

To make me happy.

You have done it

Without a touch,

Without a word,

Without a sign.

You have done it

By being yourself.

Perhaps that is what

Being a friend means,

After all.

* And if you are reading this, there is a good chance that includes you. Thank you for your friendship. You are my birthday gift this week. : ) 

caught

Last Saturday I was in a situation that made me extremely uncomfortable. 

The type of setting where usually I would feel relaxed and blissed-out and instead I wanted to get out of there. Asap. I was garbling at God (the type of prayers where you just spew oh-help-pleases and oh-no-now-whats) when I heard him clearly whisper: I am going to catch you. Let me be gentle with you.

My next thoughts were (embarrassingly) not oh-joy and full of trust. They were more like: oh crap, what's that mean?! And: what's going to happen next?!

But I was. 

Caught. 

The first was a phone call that didn't let me cry alone. The second was an email that answered questions and replied. 

I have a very dear family member who has gone through some unspeakable pain. That pain has affected a number of us around them (but nowhere near as much as they have suffered) and it has taken us a number of years to unravel the details of what to do. (The only reason I am being vague is out of respect for another person's story that isn't mine to tell.) 

It has been a lot to think about. Shock, some relief and a whole lot of reassessing of life and what I know. 

I've run and processed my way through a number of miles this week and some tears. I've sat over soup and vanilla rooibos and talked from the heart with wise women. I had mint tea in the sunshine and held a hand. And every day since Saturday my moments have been defined by being caught. 

I have also panicked, worried, felt acute anxiety. I've had the unexpected happen and then seen people come through more than I ever could have known. I have been afraid, angry and really scared. But I have - and this is key - felt the whoosh of a story-line around me being re-written, and not by my hand. 

Not by me. 

This week my pre-birthday gift has been finally giving up one story-line and embracing another. Letting go of the novel I thought my life was and would be... and realizing it's more freeing for the actual story happening to be told, than to not understand the one you thought you were inhabiting all along. 

Or maybe even just the one I really wanted it to be. 

I read a question recently: When did you first understand the meaning of love?

My answer to that is I first understood the meaning of love when I began watching what I thought was my narrative crumble. And then when choices were made to do the hard work of staying on the same page anyways. 

And this week I would add to that: the meaning of love is being caught. Letting someone catch you when all that means is you have to let go. 

God has been gentle with me. And for this I am truly amazed. 

~ Maker of All Things, Even Healings ~

by Mary Oliver

All night 

under the pines 

the fox

moves through the darkness

with a mouthful of teeth

and a reputation for death 

which it deserves.

In the spicy 

villages of the mice 

he is famous,

his nose 

in the grass

is like an earthquake,

his feet 

on the path

is a message so absolute

that the mouse, hearing it, 

makes himself

as small as he can 

as he sits silent

or, trembling, goes on

hunting among the grasses 

for the ripe seeds.

Maker of All Things,

including appetite, 

including stealth,

including the fear that makes

all of us, sometime or other,

flee for the sake

of our small and precious lives,

let me abide in your shadow -

let me hold on

to the edge of your robe

as you determine 

what you must let be lost

and what will be saved.

39

I've been thinking a lot about my next year. It starts in 14 days.

I have loved observing different friends and acquaintances celebrating the end of their thirties (or beginning of their forties) in really unique, special ways. With big goals, a check-list of experiences and things to do, running amazing races, doing something significant with friends... lots of inspiring ideas and changes that I think are exciting.

My decade of my twenties had one specific theme - and surprisingly (to me, at least) as I've thought about it lately, my thirties have had a remarkably similar theme. And, honestly, it has been a bit painful. So I'm not so keen on picking a theme for my next decade right now. And I am not even sure how or what goals I would make. But I still want to do something special this last year of my thirties.

I just haven't been sure what.

One thing for me that is still very much on my heart is learning to live life one day at a time. I tend to find security in planning, being purposeful, setting goals and looking ahead, making check lists/to-do lists and knowing what to expect.

But I don't want to do that this year.

Another thing that is very much alive to me right now is listening for God in my day-to-day life. I hang onto His whispers and they feed - they are - my life. They are my favourite stories and lists. I have a zillion unfinished journals full of alternately neat writing and squiggled-snatched writing, trying to record things I've seen, heard or experienced that are oh-so-precious; messages from Him of His love and care:

The way the light filters bright orange through the trees on a run. A mama seal and her pup playing in a cove as I paddle by. A post-it stuck to my lamp that says "thank you for being pashent, mama."

Those are my unforgettables.

And that gave me an idea. What if I wrote stories about His Happy Birthday gifts all year long?

Taking life one morning at a time necessitates looking for His new mercies, His kindnesses, His love - and it also flowers into developing in me the strengths of enjoyment and gratitude. Something I would love for Him to continue teaching me.

So you are going to be noticing some changes around here in the next couple days. The focus is going to shift a bit and my theme for this next while is this scripture that honestly is blowing my mind a little:

"...[don't put your] hope in wealth [things, accomplishments, goals, your to-do lists], 

which [are] so uncertain, 

but put [your] hope in God, 

who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."

~ from 1 Timothy 6:17

If you'll pardon me the stretch in my blog title - I am going to be putting the emphasis on His kind words this year, not mine. (And I would love nothing more than if you felt free to add in the comments ways you have seen Him in your life, too.) I may not post every day, I may only post a few times... I'm not making a to-do list for myself. : )

Instead it's going to be about watching and listening for God's daily, beautiful presence in life.... all 39 years of it and counting.

There Is A Place Beyond Ambition

~ by Mary Oliver

When the flute players

couldn't think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,

then they lay down themselves

beside the river

and just listened.

Some of them, after a while,

jumped up

and disappeared back inside the busy town.

But the rest -

so quiet, not even thoughtful -

are still there,

still listening.