It's all yours for the taking

Vacation is really not a thing when you have young children. In our case, we keep rotating the environments, they are all peaceful or fun or a little of both- but it still carries with it the usual responsibilities, melt downs, and lack of sleep that life offers up in heaps during this season of life.

We moved to the southwest over 5 years ago, and this is our time. really, my time, to travel down South and reacquaint myself with the beautiful faces of my family.

It's the time, when my little girls put their feet on the soil of my own childhood. They look up and see the tall pines, the lazy rivers. The wide open Atlantic. Sea shells. Walks with sand in their toes. Salt caked in their skin. Fried fish and homemade peach ice cream. Fireworks. My people.

Traveling home, for me, however, often feels like traveling back in time. My growth feels stunted. I stand in the grocery store of my youth, and feel awkwardly 16 again. I imagine life then. It was starting to get complicated. Those memories are not the best ones. I have grown less afraid of sadness in my life, but there is some sadness, the kind that creeps up in childhood grocery isles, that feel best left on the shelf.

I am picking up contact solution, but I can't shake the past.  I pick it up anyway, as if its for old times sake.

Every isle, a ghost of some sort.

I venture towards the baked beans and think some pre vacation therapy may be in order next year.

What's hard to explain is that it's all background noise. The present is a good one. The music is playing, the kids are happy and really its all very magical. They will remember these vacations. And there is redemption being played on the stage right before my eyes.

but the background noise, well, sometimes I just can't shake it.

I make it to the car. Take one of those deep sighs. Dr. Calhoun always said those were prayers.

I have been praying that prayer my entire life.

My daughter Millie prays it too.

In her deep 3 year old frustration, she often lets out a deep sigh.

We pass it all down, the good and the sad.

I wind my way back through the sleepy Georgia roads. Open the door.

The music is playing, kids are drinking juice boxes, and my sister is playing beach paddle ball on concrete.

I have been going about life so hard and strong, I have forgotten what it was like to reflect on much of anything, and the fact that my reflection has showed up some of my deepest wounds feels like betrayal.

Why, self, now? Can we not mosey down this road on vacation?

But it's echoes are all around me.

And they want to be healed.

Life is like this. It ambushes you on Friday morning and begs for more.

It says, this is good. but it can be better.

It says you are loved, but you can love better.

It says life is fast, and short, and long, and infuriating, and beautiful, and sometimes, even perfect.

It says those ghosts are talking but they aren't real anymore.

It says walk out of the grocery store and back to  your family.

And then thank God it's all yours for the taking.

Summer!

It's Summer! We've been taking it REAL slow this week. I say that,  I was busy on the front end with work, work, work, but other than that, we really haven't left the house. We've been playing outside and napping and generally not cleaning very much.

I have finally learned that sending my children to their room is the only discipline that works, so I have been doing that a lot with the kicking and screaming ensues. Thankfully it seems to alternate between the two and a quick 5 minutes of getting all that frustratin' out seems to do the trick.

I have also resorted to snacks being peanut butter on a spoon (which my kids think is AWESOME). So that makes me awesome right?

This week I spoke with a young girl who is about to start Samford in the Fall (my alma mater). I was so excited talking to her and when I told her we didn't have a/c in our freshman dorm she looked at me like I studied by candlelight as well. I then had to take a deep breath when I realized that a.) I started college 20 years ago and b.) SHE WAS NOT BORN.

cue, midlife crisis.

In all seriousness, it was a heart heavy week, too.

One of Annie's little classmates lost her Daddy in a sudden accident. There doesn't seem anything more unjust than a little girl losing her daddy. I have been so heart broken over it, the kind that just takes your breath away. I resort to all of the psalms heart cries. why, why and more why? how long, o lord. have mercy.

None of that relieves the sadness, which is really nothing compared to their own sadness.

The only answer I have is to be present in my own life. to pray for them.

I am also losing my sweet neighbors. I am living in certain denial over this. These were the best neighbors, the kind that feel like family. We're enjoying our lazy afternoons with them as they have showing after showing.

For the record, every dear friend I have met in this town moves to Texas, This is #3!!!! I have got one covering the border towns, one in dfw area, and now this one moving to the Texas Hill Country. We almost have the state covered, so NO MORE FRIENDS MOVING.

Well, that's about it. Week 1 of Summer under our belt.

Happy Friday:)

quiet

it's very quiet right now which makes me think my chilrin are up to no good. I am not done with my coffee and Dora is here to babysit, so it's all good. That Dora, teaching my kids to be bilingual.  How can I ever thank her?

So, it may be too soon to write about this, but I break enough rules on a daily basis anyway, so what the heck.

One of the more beautiful and challenging things we have thought through since becoming Catholic has been the theology of life. family. and children. This is all woven together, but you get my drift. I know, eyes rolling as you imagine the Duggers, with all 19? 20? Who knows how many children. That's a lot. I am too old for all that, but anyway…

So the happy news is that I was pregnant, and then the sad news is that I wasn't. Yes, we had a early miscarriage over the weekend. Yes, it was sad. And yes, I am doing ok.

We had decided in early January that we would trust God and be open to expanding our family. If you have been on my journey at all,  as in the puking for 9 months journeys with both of my girls, you know this decision was made in much trepidation. If you've been on this blog for a LONG time, you also know about the 3 years we cried out for a baby.

God gave us these beautiful girls. And the chapter just didn't seem to be closed.

As we made the decision, I felt my heart become at peace. This happens, not all the time, but often, when we give our trust to God and not ourselves.

And then the test was positive, several months later. I was scared. happy. really scared.

And then sad.

There are so many questions? You open your heart, and then it gets filled with a difficult burden.

You open your heart to life, but only to lose it?

These things are a mystery, but like all suffering, it also makes me closer to Christ. Our suffering is never alone in the Cross. It is always shared.

So that's it. I feel at peace. I am reasonably sad, and then life carries on. We all hold hands together.

I really love this little blog that I found, and I think you might like this video. Enjoy!
(disclaimer- this is not  anti- protestant propaganda. you may disagree with some things she says. that's ok. let's all be friends:)

dear spring

Hello out there! This is me today. My school girl. My coffee. Millie is somewhere peeing on the floor, because, well potty training aint really her thang. I keep thinking she will eventually tire of it. I have completely quit caring, which seems to mostly be working- or not.

Let's see, I went down to working one night a week instead of two, which has been amazing, except for the pay check. This has turned out to be highly motivating for my photography business. I have decided to go for it for real, one last time. I also started a wedding business with a friend, and we are getting business, but these things are slow going, and I am just trusting that the hard work will pay off eventually. I am taking things like marketing courses and learning about SEO. This all makes my head explode, but the creative pay off is worth it. I hope anyways.

I was able go to Mass all by myself this past Sunday, and this fabulous priest was visiting. When I went to mass, I was able to kneel for once without Annie licking the pews (yes, this happens) and I found myself praying- jesus. make me better. make me better for my kids. make be better for josh. for all of humanity, just make me better.

Then priest preached on woman at the well. 

and living water.

and giving people dignity.

and I thought about the little lady I sat with a few nights earlier at work. A woman in her 60's who had lost her mental game from a stroke. I spent most of the night telling her there was no cat in the room, and no peanut butter crackers in her bed. Then she would have these moments as I was watching "island hunters" on hgtv, and she would be like "must be nice", and I was like, "yep". At one point she looked at me and said, "this is not good." And I knew what she meant. This woman, this really young woman by all accounts, was basically in mental limbo, and a shadow of her old self. And I was sad.

jesus, make me better.

And then the offering came, and the choir sang "Give me Jesus", and I thought this might have been a better prayer. and then I thought, maybe this was the answer to my prayer.

I guess it doesn't really matter, because Jesus met me there.