Waiting for Noelle. It's all fine.

Well, pretty baby girl. Bebe is waiting for you today.  It's been a bit nerve-wracking. Jesus is teaching me to trust Him with all of my precious loved ones- even ones I don't know yet.

When your mama told me you were coming, I was just a little, well, freaked out.  You won't read this until you are old enough to know me so you'll already know that I can freak out pretty easy. Or maybe by the time you are old enough to read this, I will be so full of Jesus that I'll be cool, calm and collected. All the time.

By now you know that your mama didn't do so well when your brother was born. It was a mess. And Bebe was a BIG mess.  I LOVE my baby girl- that would be your mama and I LOVE your brother and I LOVE your daddy.  I didn't want anything bad to happen to any one of them.  And it could have been so much worse....  and that's what I remembered when I heard you were on the way.

So you are part of God's gift to me. The gift of embracing my fear. Of choosing to lean in close and figure out what fear means. Of sitting quietly and thinking back to when I was a little girl and bad stuff happened to me. Wow- sounds scary but it wasn't.  This has been a wonderful year. A year of learning how much God loves me. How much He wants to heal me way down deep. Of how much he protected me when I didn't know He was there.


So today your mom and dad took pillows and diapers and little, tiny pink clothes and a brand new car seat and headed off to the hospital for another surgery.  And I got to stay here and trust Jesus all over again.  It helped that I had Josiah to distract me.   He had his breakfast waffle and we watched his baby DVD. Hope you like them- he definitely knows which ones HE likes.





Then we put on our bike helmets and went for an explore on my bike. Bebe needed some exercise- a bit of nervous energy crackled in the house today.  We found a park where I took a bunch of blurry photos of your brother, mostly the back of his head, because he won't stand still.

And he climbed UP a slide that had a puddle of water on it and got all wet. 



And then he swung out and fell off a platform in the big kid's playground equipment.  And got shredded wood junk up his runny nose and all over his wet clothes.  It was time to go home. And change his outfit- again.




He finished up his waffle, ate some toast with peanut butter, had half a banana and some yogurt.  Then he proceeded to run around like a crazy boy and laugh and throw stuffed animals.  Obviously he knows something is up. YOU are coming!  And his world will never be the same.

Mine won't either.  I love my kids but I'm crazy about Josiah and Mariam and now YOU.  My heart is tender toward you little peanuts in a whole new way. I was too busy with life when I was the young mama with my own babies- now I can just sit on the kitchen floor with an eighteen month old toddler clad just in his diaper and eat yogurt together and be fine.  Really fine- happy and content fine.  Excited to meet another little person who will call me Bebe fine. Grateful in my heart fine.

PS- and I'm not even afraid. Because my world won't be the same either.

PPS- Uh... let's not tell Mom about the fall. He's fine.

PPSS- I think I'll have a little peanut butter and Nutella while I wait. That's fine, too.

Just hanging out.
Waiting for Noelle! 

Remembrances and new life

I'm on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina awaiting the arrival of a granddaughter.  This place always brings back so many memories- I spent six years here as a young military wife.  I had three babies here; we bought our first home and made friends for life.

And I found out that Christians are not divinely protected from tragedy.

My husband was a helicopter pilot and we buried some fine young men.  And thirty years ago, a dear friend from our small group died in Beirut, Lebanon.  On October 23, 1983, two hundred and forty one service Marines, sailors and soldiers died when a vehicle bomb exploded in their four story barracks. It was early in the morning when many were still asleep.  The bomber knew their schedules, his truck was familiar.  One source said the result was the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II. http://shar.es/EYxYs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut_Memorial

But for our little group in Jacksonville, it was personal.  And for me, it has become a small glimpse of God's grace, a strange lesson but it's what I have carried with me.  On October 16, a week before the many deaths from the truck bomb, our dear friend died in Beirut. He was a good man who went with a peacekeeping force and was shot by a random sniper. He left a toddler and a young pregnant wife in North Carolina and went to serve his country.  Ben was born after his dad left and was four months old when his dad died.  Everyone from President Ronal Reagan to the Good Morning America crew to the wives in the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit called or visited his widow and marveled at her quiet faith, her sweetness in the light of her tragedy.

All military wives wonder, "What would be my reaction if....?"  And within that same week, many of the military wives who paid respects to her were widowed themselves.  But they had just seen the compassion of Jesus surrounding and pouring out from one of their own. Only God knows ripples from the faith she modeled.

The years have gone on, our lives have marched forward but our friend's widow did not have a "happily ever after."  She struggled with her children, the guilt of new wealth, poor financial advisors, health issues, all compounded by grief and loneliness.   Perhaps that was the tragedy that touched me the most- I didn't witness many widows live out the rest of their lives but this one was not the picture of a divine bubble of protection.  The evil of the world still reached out and touched a vulnerable life.  Life proved not fair.  Young men die in war, middle age men die from disease.  But while life isn't fair and will never the same, life can be good.

Tomorrow on the 30th anniversary of Mike's death, my granddaughter, Noelle Kathryn, will be born. Ironically she will come into this world on the very same military base that sent those young men to keep peace and pay with their lives.   Mike never knew his son. My husband never knew his son-in-law or his grandchildren. He will not know this sweet baby girl.  It doesn't seem fair.  But as all widows know - life goes on and you have the choice to join in and live again.   God does not override the evil of this world to keep His people in bubble wrap.  But He does continue to give good gifts.

One good gift is memory. My son in law joined several hundred others and ran the annual Beirut Memorial 10K last Saturday. Marines remember the day in October when a coward in a truck blew up their own.  Mike's family and friends remember him. I remember the community life we shared and the love he had for his young family.  I remember the grace his widow showed in her darkest hour.

So on this overcast, dreary evening in coastal Carolina, I am grateful.  Grateful for the memories of my season of young motherhood and for old friends, however brief some of those relationships were.  I'm grateful for the joy of grandchildren, however bittersweet it is to ponder how much Bill would have loved these little peanuts.   And I'm grateful that I've learned God's heart toward me is always good. This world is but a brief sojourn before the better stuff that comes next.

My wild-child grandson leaps off practically everything and just before he launches, he jabbers, "One, two, free...!" Yes, it takes a careful ear to understand his words.  But if we listen carefully, we too will someday hear the joyful welcome- and we can jump into the place where we will understand everything.


Meanwhile, there's a new life to welcome.

A flood, a bird, an epiphany?

It all started when the Colorado downpours saturated the ground and created a moat around my sister’s window well and then breached the “dam”.  As those things fill up with water, the windows have no chance. Water rushed in.

That was three weeks ago while I was there for a couple of days.  While my brother-in-law and I tried to keep the craziness to a minimum, furniture was moved and stuff shuffled around or more honestly, tossed aside. My sister works more hours than I knew were available in a week so the basement was already typical, American storage space and well, disorder. It was the classic- “One of those days I’m going to tackle the basement”.  Frankly, after the mini-flood the basement became complete chaos. One easy solution was to just close the basement door and think about it later.  Until the cat brought in a bird and proceeded to chase it around in said basement before dining on parts and leaving a carcass and lots of feathers.   The basement moved up the list of weekend chores.

The prospect of facing the clutter and the tossed aside furniture was too much. But life has a way of forcing us to confront our stuff- the exterior clutter and the interior confusion, as well.  So the last weekend I visited. my sister and I had a lovely bike ride planned but the furnace blew a thingy and poured smoke into the house and obviously needing tending.  Her husband, lovely man that he is, doesn’t do household crisis/repairs well on his own.  He’s a great cook and does his own laundry so that's a good tradeoff. Plus Janet knew an old acquaintance with a HVAC handy husband. “Sure, we’ll come by and look at it after the boy’s football game. Be great to see you. Etc.”

Hurrah!  Problem’s not solved but we’re no longer in the literal smokey haze of broken furnace with winter coming on.  But of course, the furnace.... is in the basement.

Long story short (too late, you say....)- we hauled a pile out of the basement. Several piles. All the office catalogs from a previous job, some rain soaked fiberboard, lots of paper work, knick-knacks earmarked to go to Goodwill that had snuck into the basement when her back was turned. And it’s always easier to really sort and pitch with a kind friend.  Or a bossy, older sister.  “Seriously, why do you have a catalog from 2009?”

So we arranged furniture, planned for a painting project and generally patted ourselves on the back. The next morning, after church and a nice big breakfast, I was reading the Sunday paper and came across Howard Mansfield’s article, “An American Dilemma: Your Clutter or Your Life.”

“It’s now 'physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing,” boasts the Self Storage Association. There are about 51,000 storage facilities in the country — more than four times the number of McDonald’s.   The storage shed is a symptom of our cluttered lives.  Clutter is the cholesterol of the home, it's clogging the hearth."

                                                                                               From The Denver Post / Oct 4, 2013

He goes on to make great observations on the toll that clutter takes on our lives, our peace of mind, our family time, our living time.  “Clutter is choking our shelters. Is there any room left for us in our houses?”

We agreed. We want to live simple. We want to have less, haul stuff away, give it away.  Janet said for every thing she brought into the house, a similar item had to leave. And we had really made a dent in the basement and had several boxes to  donate. We looked at each other and with one breathe we both exclaimed, “We should do a Goodwill run!”  We are incorrigible.  But off we went to search for pillows for the new basement plan and any other absolute treasures we "need". 

But on the way, we found a large bill board advertising a new business venture for her town, which is just south of metro Denver. 

“Occupying roughly 20 acres, Vehicle Vault will include twelve storage “condos” for collectors of high-end automobiles. They will have the ability to maintain and display their prized collections in a country club-like atmosphere, and have access to concierge services, waterless car washes and transportation for vehicles that can’t be driven.”

Yes, you read that right. Not only can all of America stand under the roof area of the millions of storage units where we store stuff we can’t fit into our houses, now you can buy a condo to store your car.  Now granted, these are high-end collectible cars. Not like Beanie Babies that failed to return on their promised investment value but real assets. Like you have in a bank. Or in a vault.  For cars

“Village at Vehicle Vault. Built to provide the elite car collector a place to keep and maintain their investments and share their passion with a like-minded community of car enthusiasts.”    http://www.vehiclevaultco.com/

We decided it was a high-class storage unit, the kind you could proudly open the doors and share with fellow hoarders, I mean enthusiasts.   We laughed, took pictures and proceeded to not just one but two Goodwills where we scored fabric for pillows and a pair of absolutely necessary black capris.  And a cute pair of  brand new shoes. Don't judge. 

So... not sure the moral, the lesson, even the point of all this.  It just felt very ironic to be motivated to go shopping after we emptied a space that had been full of clutter.  And driving by the construction site for yet another storage facility/ museum struck me as the height of irony in a culture that even has a word for simplicity. 

Either way the bird feathers are gone, the basement's cleaned, the furnace is being pondered and we had an epiphany.  I just forgot what it was. Maybe my mind’s a bit cluttered. 

Grant Wood's America

As a little girl in Alaska I wasn't exactly exposed to fine art. I don't even remember an art museum. My dad was faithful to take us to the latest Warren Miller ski movie each year.  http://www.skinet.com/warrenmiller/
His true art appreciation phase was later in his life, after he retired from milking cows twice a day.

But one image I vividly remember is a Grant Wood print at our friend's house. The wife was a consummate homemaker.  All the Alaskan women seemed to excel at something and Betty was the one who grew humongous begonias, made all her own clothes from complicated, elegant Vogue patterns and decorated her house with midcentury modern furniture.  Well, it wasn't all that many years past the midcentury but it was sleek and chic compared to our dairy farm utilitarian decor.  My mother, God bless her, only had a school teacher's brief summer to fuss with her home decor.

When our families gathered for dinners or holidays at Betty's home,  I would stand and gaze at her small German windup music box. The box was just the base for a tiny scene- children and tiny clothes on lines and bunches of flowers. Sweet and romantic and delicate. These images and faint tinkle of mechanical music still tickle my memory and  again I am a small child, gazing the eye level at the tiny scene.  And above the long, low cabinet where the music boxes lived, was a Grant Wood print. Rolling hills of greens and yellows.  Rows of perfectly planted corn.  Peace, order, harmony.

"Young Corn"
http://bjws.blogspot.com/2012/10/1930s-americas-great-depression_12.html

http://www.grantwoodartgallery.org/grantwood.htm


Grant Wood's America is not real life, nor was it then.  He is more known for his iconic "American Gothic"

"American Gothic"

but his image of idyllic rural life touched something deep in me.  Perhaps the rough, not quite finished atmosphere of Alaska gave me a longing for the apparent permanence of a Midwest townscape.  My front yard faced the same looming mountains that Betty's did.  But her house reflected orderly, Midwestern roots and that contrast must have spoken something to my young soul.


So this week as I drove across the rolling hills of the Midwest, I was back in a Grant Wood painting. The light was terrible and the trees were only hinting of their fall colors but the same impression was there.  Fresh cut edges of stubble outlined the even lines of golden corn. Crops smoothly moved over the rounded hills.  Apple orchards had produce stands and I munched on a carmel apple of a variety I've never heard of.  Amish buggies occasionally shared the road with cars and trucks.  Farmsteads were tidy and a variety of barns begged to be photographed.

In my South Dakota life I see barns that tell the tales of failed attempts to conquer the land. Empty house slant into the wind, black windows are sightless eyes staring without life.  Spent and conquered, the farm will eventually crumble into the wildness of prairie.

But here in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, man has won over the land. Or at least here are scenes of cooperation and productivity, established patterns of crops, orchards and gardens.  Like a Grant Wood painting.

All that musing as I drove came from a print from my childhood. It was a small journey back into a formative memory.  And I wondered- what children who come to my house see? Are there images in my home that will spark a lifelong  longing for beauty or order or the Creator?  I love to create a visual feast for just my eyes to enjoy but this trip across an image of my childhood reminded me- you never know what visual memory you are creating for others. Especially the children of your world. It's not the same as a tour of a fine art museum.... or perhaps it is.

Beauty will save the world.  What's my part in creating that beauty? Not just for my own soul, but for the other people, large and small. who share my world.