A recipe for calm

I was out for the day yesterday, and when I came home, my kids were over-screened and tired of each other. Sam went to a friend's house but the other three were home with me and cranky as bears.

I thought a big snuggle would help, so after supper I called them for a coze on my bed. They started sniping and snarking at each other, and it soon turned into a knot of unkindness.

I knew they needed a change, a reset, something fresh, but I was also tired and didn't want to go out anywhere. Two dirty pairs of feet were wrestling near my face. 

"Let's do a foot spa night," I suggested, grasping at straws, and they all stopped, delighted. 

"Really?"

"Really."

We set up candles and filled the tub with hot bubbly water. Vava laid out clippers and nail polish. We covered a folding chair with a soft blanket for the pedicuree. For a true spa experience we added sliced cucumbers and epsom salts to the tub, which elicited oohs and ahhs (and a few attempts at soggy heads-or-tails). I found a peaceful spa soundtrack and turned it on.

They sat on the edge of the tub and luxuriated in the sounds, the scents, the feel of a foot scrubby mat. They laughed and chatted and I brought in drinks and Eevee came in for a curious sniff.

After the foot soak they changed into pyjamas and we painted each other's nails.

Finally we ended up on my bed again, relaxed and happy. I read them a few chapters of Pascal's current bedtime book, and then they all piled on top of me.

"Group hug!" they squealed.

"Seriously, thank you Mama."

"This was the best night I've EVER had."

"Thank you for taking such good care of us."

And it was so simple. So small. Just some deliberate softness and togetherness after a day apart.

I love these lambs.

(this last pic! we'd been doing silly faces and then V said, "let's make the face we'd make if we got to see Papa right now!" and it was the happiest one.)

[And a brief aside to my Christian friends, because of all the political uproar about the last supper vs bacchanalia vs Olympics that's roiling around: 

We don't honour Jesus at the last supper by hating people, even if we might think they're mocking him.

We honour him by doing what he did at the last supper ... He washed their feet. Even Judas's.  xo]

Let there be light

When Patrick and I first started wanting to get pregnant, we had a few years with no success. We went to visit a doctor and I found out I have PCOS, which makes it harder to get pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term.

I miscarried our first baby at just a few weeks - I found out I had been pregnant in the losing of the baby, so while it was sad, it wasn't the same as a loss after knowing.

The second time, after another cycle of fertility treatment, I knew I was pregnant right away. Having a high risk pregnancy meant I was scheduled for regular weekly ultrasounds, as my specialist tracked the growth and safety of the tiny little baby bean. 

The ultrasounds were so cool. A little beating heart, a tiny little grain of rice full of light and life. We watched over twelve weeks as the head and torso grew, and arms and legs and impossibly tiny fingers and toes.

I didn't know it was extraordinary then, but unlike subsequent pregnancies, I experienced a conscious connection to this baby. I felt like we were holding a continual conversation, a flow of love, yes, but also words and thoughts back and forth. 

And then one day it stopped. There was silence.

And I went to my doctor for my weekly ultrasound and she confirmed it. The baby had died. 

She turned the screen toward me and I could not get over the difference in this ultrasound. It was like the lights had been turned off. The baby's body was there but its life was gone, and the ultrasound was dark.

It's been a long time since I thought about that. It's been fifteen years since that day. But look at this wonderful article that I stumbled across.

There is light. I wasn't imagining it. There's light. When life is created, there's light.

We call it the dawn of creation. Yeah - dawn.

Way back at the cusp of us, in the immortal eternity, God began us in the same way, with these words flaring in the darkness: let there be light.

You know I struggle with depression - I share this a lot. But this article has brought me a lot of joy this summer.

We began as light.

Collectively, but also individually - at the dawn of our own creation, a spark and flare, luminous in the dark.

God thought of us - of you, of me, each of us - and said, 

Let there be light.

A feature, not a bug

The thing about heartbreak and sorrow and trouble

(Which I do my best to prevent, avoid, or - when those prove impossible - ignore)

Is that I can't think of it as a failure or a fault anymore.

It's a feature, not a bug.

Nature testifies:

Breaking open is the only way to go on living.

Pascal has been saving the seeds from his apples and putting them in plastic baggies, wrapped in a damp paper towel, to sprout.

Yesterday he opened one that had been lying in the sun, and eight hard little black seeds popped out. They remained unchanged from the day he put them in. But one - one was split and cracked wide open, and a sprout was stretching out of it. 

I know that the cracking and sprouting can't have felt comfortable. It hurts to split, it hurts to spill your guts, it hurts to reach beyond yourself into the glaring sunshine instead of staying safe, kerneled inside the walls that have always been.

It hurts to dare.

But.

The other eight little seeds will, safe and comfortable, never become trees. They will never crack and split and spill in the raw sunshine or be plunged into the dark, close earth. They will never burst out of soil and stretch skyward. They will never bear leaves or lose them. They will never stand in the stark cold with snowflakes on their branches. They will never blossom and produce fruit, a hundred times over, full of seed. They will never fulfill their potential. 

(Unless a seed dies it abides alone)

And yet, 

And yet, I spend so much time begging God not to let me crack open. Not to make me endure raw vulnerability. Not to make me suffer, or be still, or seen.

But this is a feature, not a bug. Cracking open is the road to fullness. Splitting wide and spilling out is how we become. It's how we fill the earth. 

(And for Christians, it's not a surprise, really.

Jesus said, Follow Me.

And then he died and was buried and rose again. It's always been the way.)

This is how we follow. Being brave enough to endure the splitting open, the vulnerability, the living that - at first, to a heart full of fear - feels like dying. Letting new sap run in new veins. Reaching for the sun and rooting deep into the soil. 

This isn't easy for me. 

I have a strong give-uppy side.

Dying to just die, and not have to try any longer ,is my temptation.

But dying and living more abundantly, more fully - that's the feature. That's the feature. 

Full living isn't achieved by staying safe, or remaining unchanged. But enduring the ache and pain of dying to comfort and safety; refusing to worship at the altar of The Way Things Are; being hurt and still daring to sprout with the strange new life that looks so wildly different from the seed - 

This is living.

Cousins

My sister in law flew in with her boys last week. The kids immediately began playing as if they'd never been apart, instead of like people who'd only seen each other twice in the last five years.

My youngest two boys gave up their room quite eagerly for their aunt and cousins, and made a nest on our bedroom floor for their own sleeping.

Last night, they decided a night was too long to be apart, and invited the boys to sleep with them.

I lay down in my bed, and after a riotous half hour of fart jokes and butt puns, Kachi crawled in with me while the other 3 giggled and whispered on the floor.

Kachi's breathing slowed and grew into a snore, and was soon matched by Grant's. Pascal and Tyler continued whispering and laughing.

I loved bearing witness to it. An ordinary night, wrapped in the beauty of loving and being loved, being silly and safe and free.

It was a very good way to fall asleep.

Sprout

I've been worried that my kids might have inherited my brown thumb. I cannot seem to grow plants to save my life.

Pascal has been painstakingly saving his apple seeds at lunch every day. He wants to sprout the seeds and grow an apple tree.

Usually, he forgets and throws them out when dumping the trash out of his lunchbox.

Or loses them.

Or puts them on the counter next to the sink and someone else pops them into the composter.

One day he remembered, and we wrapped them in damp paper towel and stored them in a baggie and a seed actually sprouted, strong and astonishing ... but that was thrown out by the next person to clean the kitchen.

So a few weeks ago when he finally remembered at every step, we wrote SEEDS SPROUTING, DO NOT THROW OUT! on the baggie and tucked it on the window sill.

Today, we checked it for life, and wonder of wonders, a slim and scraggly green shoot was waiting for us.

Pascal was in raptures.

He called everyone to see it, carefully extricated it from the paper towel, placed it in a shot glass and set it on the window sill.

"You should pray for it now," suggested Vava, hovering over his shoulder, and he did.

And my heart flowed while my baby asked God to not let anything bad happen to his baby, and to help it grow. 

"How does it happen?" Vava asked, "how does the seed turn into the sprout?"

In spite of my long history of killing plants, but I tried to answer. "There's life inside, and when it has the right conditions to grow, it bursts out and reaches for them - water, and sunlight, and warmth," I said. "It drinks them in and transforms them into more life."

And of course, I was looking at my own little seedlings, grown taller and lovelier than I could have imagined. The life inside of them stretching and growing, reaching for sunlight and fresh air and love, for food food and kindness and care. And I, too, pray over them as they stretch out and up, and I rejoice absurdly over each new achievement.

And I see you too.

I see you, friend, with your busyness and your family and your hard work, and I see how you still tend the seeds that fill your life with colour. I see you picking up that paintbrush, that notebook, that guitar. I see you staying up late to tend to your own sprouts, trying something new, making life burst out where only seeds had been. 

I see you daring to hope that seed will sprout this time, when so many seeds have failed before. 

Making your patch of dirt bloom is beautiful and ordinary and holy.

May God bless you and protect you as you grow your one wild and wonderful life.

For my friends, at sunset

After a few very busy and trying days, I was driving home and trying to keep my brain awake. The radio was boring and I was all alone and had nothing to listen to and no one to talk to and suddenly I was stuck by the beauty of the sky. My breath caught. 

The colours weren't brilliant - soft orange and purple. The orange was a creamy sorbet, and the purple was the exact shade that too-ripe blackberries leave on your fingers. And, my attention caught by the colours, I noticed a flock of birds flying above them in the gold and blue sky, silhouettes of summer to come. Then, for the first time this year, I saw the sweet spring green of new leaves swaying from a willow tree.

I felt like I'd just been given new eyes.

I'd driven by that willow tree five times today, and I'm sure it had been no less lovely. But I didn't see it until I'd been pulled out of myself by the sunset.

The women I work with are amazing. I know they are lovely. I know they are kind. We work together every day and I see their patience and resilience and thoughtfulness with the kids week after week.

Yesterday I got a flat tire, and they all jumped in to help keep my day running. One used her break time to pick up my kids after school. One stayed late to give a lift home in the rain after a meeting. The others offered to help me get to school in the morning. Another friend picked up my daughter from cheer practice.

Last week our toilet broke, and we couldn't find a plumber who was available this week. One brought her plumber husband over right away to fix it. 

And, like the sunset with springtime glory, my car trouble and broken toilet brought their kindness, their generosity, into sharp focus. 

What a gift you are, my friends. You are lovelier than sunsets, and I am so grateful for all of you. Your beauty lights up the world.

Sympathetic Resonance

 In one of my facebook groups, a blogger brought up a question: why blog anymore? There isn't really a thriving community of bloggers and readers anymore. It's true for me at least - I sometimes click on a blogpost if I see a link on Facebook or twitter, but (apart from two that email me frequent fresh posts) I don't seek out blogs to follow and read regularly. I write sporadically.

When I was in Zambia, one thing that never failed to catch my heart was the singing. At church, the entire congregation sang. Some held the melody, strong and true, while harmonies swelled and swept around it like a murmuration of starlings, some high and some low and all soaring free. Sometimes the leader would sing out the first few words of the next verse just when the previous one was ending because not everyone had a hymnbook. This made for a call-and-response feel that whorled and looped and at the end of the song I'd be a little out of breath and just lost in the wonder and glory of so many different notes sung at once and still sounding so so so good.

 A few years ago I learned about sympathetic resonance. Key-notes.com describes it as "An acoustic phenomenon that helps make a piano sound beautiful ... If we play a note on the piano, other compatible notes vibrate in sympathy as long as there are no dampers to, well, put a damper on them."

And the congregation in our church in Zambia had that nailed down. Sympathetic resonance. Singing together for years, trained since childhood to listen to each other, the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, the mood ... and to join in.  I wish I could be there now.

But sympathetic resonance isn't just for pianos and really good acapella singing. 

For me, it's why I blog. There's something inside that longs to be heard and echoed back. It's why I share (or overshare) the raw or tender things, the silly things, the embarrassing or boring or any sort of things ... 

Because of that resonance in the heart when someone nods and says, "same." When someone says, "I needed to hear that," or "I thought I was the only one." It doesn't always echo back. It doesn't resonate with everyone. 

But the little vibration of harmony when it does - 

the sympathetic resonance -

is glory. 

Teleportation

Along with everyone else on the planet,

I was walking through the ridiculousness

Of Costco on a Sunday afternoon

When I was abruptly and wholly transported

To a crowded, cement-floored dining hall

In the northwesternmost tip 

Of Zambia.

I blinked, and it was Costco again

But that underlay of magic remained.

"Wait!" I called to my daughter, who was walking ahead, "there's something -"

And I followed my nose like a foxhound

Like a cartoon human chasing a stream through the air

Around a corner and down the aisle

Until I realized that the pink and yellow fragrance I was inhaling 

Was the scent of ripe guavas.

I had never had a guava until I lived there

And their fresh, seedy sweetness will forever invoke Sakeji for me.