Early this morning I crawled into my bed after a quick trip to the brother's new house in downtown Denver.  After sleeping on two air mattresses stacked on top of each other and after family car rides through city traffic (mother's heart almost gave out) and morning races for the bathrooms, my bed felt like a hug from an old friend.  Husband left the high school retreat he is serving at to pick me up from the airport and when I dropped him back off at his cabin I pulled his body to me tight.  Thanks for letting me talk, I really needed to say things out loud to you.

And then I drove the rest of the way home by myself where the happy reunion with my bed occurred.  It's late morning now and I still have not left bed.  Why would I?  I am sitting here thinking through the trip.  Through the words that flew, the conversations about small things that are hard to recall now, the quiet spaces when our mouths stilled for a few minutes and connection happened.  I am thinking about the power of parenting and the power of narrative combined.  I am 29 years old and still, the way my mother speaks about my life has great hold over me.  I am 29 years old and I am still not tired of hearing dad tell me he loves me.

This must be one of the greatest tools He gave to parents: writing their children's narrative.  The choice to name a child sweet or good or bad.  The effect those words have on a person's body when they move from his ears to his brain to his heart.  And the writing continues into adulthood.  It lessens, maybe.  Children grow and become persons with boundaries and independence and a (hopefully) strong internal drive.  Still.  The way a mother or father speaks of their grown children, the proud, confident words they might use or the way they might let negativity creep in through worry words and warning words-- if their children are wise they will still hear them and if the parents are wise, they will pause before writing another line. 

I left this trip stunned once again by the weight of words out loud.  Stunned by my own haste when using language and by the way words knock into souls.  I left vowing to say the good things out loud.

I celebrated a brother and a sister this week, both I love fiercely.  Brother first: stronger than anyone has a right to be, sweeter than anyone when he needs to be.  He is a man who invests in relationships and relationships are what drive him.  When I ask him how to pray, he tells me pray for community.  He is almost as moody as I am, sometimes more lonely, and I love him for that.  He can be so reserved, and then he can burst out and you will be caught off guard, you will laugh harder than you should because it is such a relief when he cracks open.

Sister today: it is national adoption month and so of course she was born now.  She is the one who is motivated by other's needs.  She will ask you a thousand times to get her a drink, to let her put her legs on your lap, to hand her her book.  But if she sees a man with a sign on the street she will want to offer him something.  And if she sees someone struggling, she will move quickly, quietly, unnoticed to meet that struggle.  She spends her time counseling young girls about their pregnancy.  She talks of Haiti-- a place she has never been but has prayed over for years.  She is the one person I know who always answers her phone.  Who gives gifts for no reason.  Who can make me laugh just by the way she breathes because she is absolutely adorable and for that reason she will always be everyone's favorite.  She is baby brim.

I spent time with my family this week and I have never been so aware of how much we have.  Of how rich we all are in possessions and relationships and choices.  We are immeasurably blessed by an immeasurably good God and this morning, that is more than enough.  This morning, all worry words and discontent words have no place.  We are alive together.  We are loved by Him.  And we have the means to be in the same room, to share breakfasts and late nights and stressful bickering car rides.  To write any narrative other than a grateful one would be false.