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Friday, 31 December 2010

I'm writing again. Not for you, but for myself. So it's not going to be posted, but just so you know, it's good.

Writing is my catharsis.

I am growing like a little plant in sun, stronger daily. I have gone through a lot this past year. I'm relieved it's over.

My kids are doing splendidly. They are my sun in winter.

I have a lot to let go of and let out of myself. I understand why people have kept their distance. Divorce has cooties.

I'm grateful to the brave ones who have stepped in and stayed close. Thank you.

Every day is a winding road, I get a little bit closer to feeling fine. Thank you 1990's for summing me up.

<3

Monday, 03 May 2010

you wouldn't believe it if you didn't know it for yourself.

the way their little hands can brush across your lips, touching your "soft eyes" (eyelashes), pulling at your hair and whispering that they just peed a little bit and want breakfast and to watch the monster movie. your cell phone reads 4:40 and your body aches and depression is hovering, like a raft in the banks of a river, floating silently and waiting to crash into your face as soon as you've had some hazelnut decaf.
And none of it matters. All that matters is the dance he does when you agree to let him have a picnic on the floor this morning, eating cereal on a blanket instead of at the table. The way he does something overly silly and then glances back, paused, breathing, watching your face. Oh, to make you laugh. He lives for it.
It's so worth it. Being in this life.
I am so grateful to be here, teaching, telling stories, knowing and passing on, the knowing.
I will let a little pain pass through me if it means they will gain from it. Secondhand wisdom; freedom from striving.
I will wait for them to grow up. This sleepless struggle filled with animal cracker crumbs and questions and limits and laundry is the best way I know how to be. I want to let this time stretch out thinly, vanish into eternity. At the end of the long, narrow road will be two young men with thin, familiar faces, stories to share, wisdom of their own and a world to win. I love that my life is tied up in the raising of those men. I will wait to meet them.
For now it's all storytimes and food shoved into the cracks of the cushions, stains in my carpet, and two smiling faces that make my heart feel like it's having a brain aneurysm. If that makes any sense at all, which it doesn't, it was so unexpected. My life.

Sunday, 02 May 2010

I am starting to wake up, against my will. There is so much that pulls me into sleep- the tears that blur my eyes, the harsh light of day that cuts edges of things like a knife. Sometimes the light is so bright it makes you sleepy. All you want to do is collapse. Let the wind take you. Wake up on a different day, with the weather changed and a stranger holding your hand and asking your name.
I don't want to answer, and I want to stay silent, stay in the dream. I want to wake up when I'm ready, and that may be never. I want to wait for him to fight for me. For our kids. Like in the stories we tell, charging in and fighting that dragon. Only today, the dragon is himself. And he isn't willing to lay down his life to be the knight in shining armor that we all dreamed him to be.

It T E R R I F I E S.

Reality.

I don't want to know, don't want to have to interpret these events for my idealistic children. Don't want to explain why daddies don't come home, why daddies make bad, bad, bad choices that hurt everyone. Why we love daddy anyway, and even if he's bad, he's not a badguy. How in this universe can daddy be a goodguy who does bad things?
The story for now is that he had to go, because sometimes daddies just have to. It's their job.
Soon they need to know that there are good daddies who don't go. That it's not normal. That mommies and daddies are supposed to try to stay at home together. I'm just not ready for his questions...

I am afraid of my own scheming heart. Being single is so different now. I am so much wiser, and so angry. I am not ready for the compliments, the comments, the glances, the way their conversation follows me home, irritates me, makes ME feel unfaithful for hearing that they appreciate me, think I'm worth something.

I don't know how to be anyone's anything. All I can do is apologize. I don't know how to find someone healthy who won't abuse me or my children. All I can do is run and hide.
No other plans, currently.

.

Thursday, 28 January 2010

I have lost.
I am finding my savior in the poor again.
He is all around me in many guises- this distressing disguise refreshes me. I have been poor, many people would still call me poor, I love the poor of the Earth, and He walks among us, among the broken, the lame.
I have spent so much time and energy comparing myself, mentally purchasing things that will earn my acceptance in social circles. I think of the poor and hungry of the earth and I am pulled to purchase- not their freedom or their food- but a new dining room table and chairs for us to enjoy eating our abundance of food on in luxury, comfort and the approval of men.
I have been disillusioned by churches, by people, by books, by beliefs, by my own heart. But Christ is not in the consumer christianity that I am swallowed up in here. He's in the dump in Africa with Heidi Baker, weeping healing tears onto the poor there. He's here in the 3am wakeup call by a crying child, waiting to be comforted and soothed back to sleep by a mother that is always at work. I have to know this to keep my feet here. I am trying to learn that in order to learn to love, I have to start here, with snotty noses and so much cuddling I am exhausted from it. I have to learn to really listen and to see the good after a long, hard day, and to smile into a little face that might not even cognitively remember what we did the first five years of their life, and still know that I am laying a foundation.
I am dreaming of taking my teenagers to wash the feet of lepers in India. But we will never go if I can't build a home now and teach them their great worth and to respect all men, to love the least, to go beyond in serving.. starting with respecting Daddy, being gentle with eachother, picking up their toys when they're tired.
I've been told many times that I will teach other women how to be mothers. I just googled 'how to serve the poor with toddlers'... HA.
Maybe someday I will figure that out and teach it to others. You can't take them into streets or soup kitchens at this age. But my neighbor next door is undergoing chemotherapy right now and if she would stop being so stubborn and let me take her some food, maybe Zadok could stir the soup before I bring it over. My neighbors above us are recently emigrated here from India. They avoid us (and all their neighbors here) like the plague, but I am praying for a way to get to know them. I really don't have to go far.

I am a nanny for a family right now. I can love the children I'm paid to care for like two little souls with worth and dignity, loved by the Lord. This is all I have. I am grasping at what I can, looking for my Lord, trying to lay it all down and serve, not knowing what we're having for dinner tonight or if I will get time to put the laundry away, but wanting and hoping and trying to remember that there is a world so much bigger than new dining room tables with matching chairs. There are orphans and widows crying out for justice, and the only way their voices might be heard is through the words of a God who thought it important to tell his people- hey, go take care of them. You know, if you really love me like you say you do. And those hopeless people are just waiting for us to take notice and finally obey.
www.hopeforhaitinow.org

Monday, 14 December 2009

been workin for two days on a painting 4x4ft. an alphabet thing for zadok's room with folk arty letters and birds. I just love the smell of paint, the feel of the textures, paper shredding under my fingers, watching the letters print out, one by one, 26 sheets, making stencils and plans, sketching out a grid with a sharp pencil on found wood, fucking it up, fixing it again, changing it some more, screwing it to the wall so that there's something bright for my little boy to look at. i could do this more often.